NDLI: A web based tool for teaching hardware design based on the plain simple hardware description language

Content Provider	IEEE Xplore Digital Library
Author	Becker, K.
Copyright Year	2014
Description	Author affiliation: Tech. Univ. of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany (Becker, K.)
Abstract	In this paper, a new online learning tool is presented. The goal is to improve the learning experience for designing hardware on register transfer level (RTL)-level by facilitating collaboration and allowing a more agile development cycle. It also enables the inspection of the learning process of the students. When students have to learn RTL hardware-design, usually either Verilog or VHDL are used as hardware description language. Those languages do not just have an unfamiliar syntax and programming paradigm for the students (they are not sequential, but rather describe the wiring of components), they also come with complex tools. During the hands-on part of the lecture, a lot of time is spent in learning the functions (and bugs) of each tool involved. It also happens that VHDL was originally designed for a different purpose and thus accepts input that is not necessarily fit for synthesis for FPGAs, which are primarily used as target for those hardware designs. Much to the frustration of the students, it is also rather easy to create a mismatch between what the simulation does and how the design behaves on the actual hardware. This does not only result in a highly unsatisfying learning experience, as ”learning” is mostly about understanding the tools and their output, but it also distracts from the real goal of learning how to properly design hardware. A novel programming language called PSHDL, the ”plain simple hardware description language”, keeps the parallelism paradigm of VHDL and Verilog, but provides a significantly improved workflow. This workflow and its features are outlined in this paper. The improvements are not just for the student side, but also allow the teacher to take a direct look at the students' progress and learning path. This information could then be used to improve the whole learning experience.
Sponsorship	IEEE Educ. Soc.
Starting Page	88
Ending Page	93
File Size	1268366
Page Count	6
File Format	PDF
ISBN	9781479931910
ISSN	21659567
DOI	10.1109/EDUCON.2014.6826073
Language	English
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Publisher Date	2014-04-03
Publisher Place	Turkey
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Rights Holder	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subject Keyword	Computer languages Semantics Syntactics Programming Light emitting diodes Hardware Registers
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

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