AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course aims to provide expertise and to develop design skills on the following topics: architectures of integrated electronic systems, specification methodology, system description and automatic synthesis, top-down design flow, verification and simulation methodology, hardware description languages and test methodology.

Attendance and active participation in the proposed training activities (lectures and laboratories) and individual study will allow the student to:

- achieve an in-depth knowledge of the semantics of Hardware Description Languages (HDL), in particular of the VHDL language, and the syntax of VHDL that allows you to describe a digital electronic system at Register Transfer Level (RTL);

- learn the design methodology of a dedicated digital system (FPGA or ASIC standard cell) based on the use of HDL;

- know the main methodologies / technologies for the implementation of dedicated digital electronic systems i.e. field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC);

- be able to analyze the design of a digital electronic system described in VHDL;

- be able to analyze and develop a dedicated digital electronic system based on an architecture: control system (Finite State Machine, FSM) + data processing system (data path)

- design a dedicated digital electronic system with FPGA or ASIC standard cell technologies/methodologies starting from the customer/user specifications in natural language.

TEACHING METHODS

The course is organized with lectures, for a total of about 40 hours, and with laboratory exercises of about 16 hours. Attendance to lectures and laboratories is compulsory, as per the didactic regulations. The laboratories will be held by the lecturer, assisted by laboratory tutor. A brief theoretical introduction is provided at the beginning of each laboratory activity with the aim of providing the basic principles on which the methodologies of description and synthesis of digital circuits on FPGA that will be used are based. In the practical part, the students, divided into groups of two or three members and with the support of the lecture and tutor, will have to apply the methodologies for the description / synthesis of digital circuits. The organization and the schedule of the laboratories will be communicated directly by the lecturer at the beginning of the course.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The course program includes the following topics:

• Introduction to the description of a digital electronic system at Register Transfer Level
• Circuit implementation of Flip-Flop and Latches
• Power / energy consumption model of digital circuits in CMOS technology
• Analysis of timing and response times
• Metastability and related issues
• Organization of data flow and pipeline processing
• Design methodologies and management aspects e.g. recurring and non-recurring costs
• Standard cell ASIC and FPGA methodologies and technologies
• Introduction to Hardware Description Language (HDL)
• Basic constructs and instructions
• Concurrent assignment Instructions
• Sequential assignment instructions
• Circuit synthesis of VHDL code
• Design of sequential digital circuits
• Finite State Machine (FSM)
• RTL-based Synthesis / Project Methodology
• System structure and project: control and Data Paths (i.e. FSMD)

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

The teaching material is published on the Aulaweb course page.

Reference textbooks are:

• Pong. P. Chu, RTL HardwareDesign Using VHDL, J. Wiley and Sons, 2006.
• N.H.E. Weste, D.M. Harris, CMOS VLSI Design – A circuit and system perspective, 4th Ed., Addison Wesley Publisher, 2011
• Jan M. Rabaey - Anantha Chandrakasan - Borivoje Nicolic, Circuiti integrati digitali 2/Ed., L'ottica del progettista, Pearson, ISBN9788871922317
• M. Olivieri, Elementi di Progettazione dei Sistemi VLSI, EdiSes s.r.l., Napoli, 2004

Other textbooks of interest:

• F. Vahid, Digital Design, J. Wiley and Sons, 2002
• Douglas R. Perry, “VHDL: Programming by example”, 4th Ed., 2002,Mc Graw Hill, DOI: 10.1036/0071409548.
• Pong. P. Chu, FPGA prototyping by VHDL examples, J. Wiley and Sons, 2008.
• Mark Zwolinski, Digital System Design With VHDL, 2nd Edition, ISBN 0-13-039985-X