Hardware/software co-training lab: from VHDL bit-level coding up to CASE-Tool based system modeling

Abstract

This paper focuses on the combination of educating hardware as well as software development in one laboratory. The needs to offer such a co-training concept arise from the demands of industry towards the desired skills of today's engineers. Their view must no longer be restricted to his/her own work, but has to be widened to a complete system view. To provide an appropriate educational scheme, the university courses have to adapt to these changes. Therefore an innovative lab concept is presented here. The goal is to improve student's skills in multiple directions to deliver an efficient inter-disciplinary hardware/software lab course, based on the training of state-of-the-art industrial architectures and relevant tools.