Comparative study on verilog-based and C-based hardware design education

Abstract

As the complexity of hardware functionality continues to increase, higher abstraction level design methodology becomesmuch more important. To meet this trend, we have startedan exercise class to teach HDL-based hardware design, in1999, and modified curriculum to teach C-language-basedhardware design, in 2002. We have experiences on teachingboth HDL-based and C-based hardware design methodology.In this paper we summarize experiences encountered fromteaching both HDL-based and C-based design method, theobjective of the C-based design exercise class, and syllabusof both HDL-based and C-based exercise classes.