A multilevel approach to teaching hardware description languages

Knowledge of hardware description languages is an important element in the educational background of both undergraduate and graduate electrical and computer engineering students. However, the manner in which they are exposed to hardware description languages should differ because of the different level of maturity of the student populations. Graduate students are mature intellectually and thus can handle extensive exposure to the underlying abstraction of the language. Undergraduates have more difficulty handling abstraction and thus should be given controlled doses of the language. This paper describes a multilevel approach to reaching hardware description languages that accounts for these differences. Tool sets used in both courses are also described.