This book is an English version of EDA Technology and Verilog HDL published by Tsinghua University Press.
Based on the great practical value of EDA technology in engineering domain and significant importance on the cultivation of practical ability and innovative awareness in the teaching of EDA, the characteristics of the book are mainly reflected in the following two aspects.
1. Great attention on the cultivation of practical ability and innovative ability
In most chapters, the highly targeted experiments and design projects are arranged, which make the students digest and strengthen the teaching content and effect of each chapter through experiments, and possibly link closely the theoretical knowledge with practice and independent design from the beginning of study.
The book includes dozens of experiments and the related design projects. These projects relate to EDA tool software of various types, broad technology areas, intensive and targeted knowledge dabbling and independent innovation awareness with good revelation. Same as the examples in the book, all of the experimental projects pass through the simulation test of EDA tools and hardware verification of FPGA platform. In addition to the detailed requirements on experimental objectives, experimental principles and experimental reports, each experimental project has 2¡«5 subprojects or subtasks. They are usually divided into: the first level experiments are the verification experiments related to the content elaborated in the chapter, and usually provide detailed and verified design source programs and experimental methods. The students only need to input the code to the computer, compile and simulate according to the requirements and implement them on the experimental system, which make the students have preliminary perceptual knowledge and enhance the efficiency of the experiments. The second level experimental task is to make some improvement and exertion based on the last experiment.
The third level experiment is usually to propose the requirements and tasks of independent design.
The fourth and fifth experimental level is to raise the requirements on independent innovation design in the case of only giving some hints. Therefore, teachers can arrange different levels of experimental projects with different tasks, according to the course hours, requirements on
teaching experiments and different student objects.
2. Great attention on the combination of flexibility and completeness in teaching
material selection
The structural features of the textbook determine that the number of teaching hours is very flexible, which can be long or short, depending on the specific major characteristics, course orientation and the degree of early education of learners. The course hours are approximately 30¡«54. Considering the characteristics of the EDA technology course and the text book, the concrete teaching can be extensive, in which most of the content, particularly the practical projects, allow students to access information, raise questions, solve problems, and even innovate and create by themselves. The teacher only needs to be an enlightener, guider, encourager and examiner and appraiser of the students¡¯ achievements. In most cases, the teaching process needs to be finished when the meaning has been conveyed, and there is no need to stick to details and be well-rounded. But there is a principle that the number of scheduled experimental hours should
be the more the better.
In fact, the number of hours in any course is always limited. To effectively increase the time of the practice and self-design of students, a teaching reform measure of Tsinghua University can be used for reference. That is, each of the undergraduate students of the electronics department gets an FPGA development board from entrance, and can use the board from the first year of undergraduate study to the end of postgraduate study. This is because EDA technology itself is a course that takes all the lab exercises and designs back home.
Our university has also basically adopted this measure for this course. That is, every student in the EDA course can borrow a set of EDA experimental board, so that they can utilize their own computers to complete the self-design projects in their spare time and strengthen the learning effect. The practice has indicated that, this arrangement has extended the experimental hours effectively and the teaching effect is naturally remarkable.
We suggest encouraging the students to utilize their spare time to learn all the content of the book as much as possible, master all the EDA tools and software and related development tools introduced in this book, and complete the experiments and design tasks of this book as much as possible. We can even refer to the requirements of the textbook, arrange the related innovation design competitions, further stimulate students¡¯ enthusiasm and initiative in learning and strengthen the training of their manipulative ability and independent innovation ability.
There is another question that needs to be discussed here. That is, although the cultivation of independent innovation ability is important, improving it effectively is not an overnight thing.
The teaching practices of many years tell us that, for this problem, the teaching reform must be started from two aspects, one is the teaching content, second is the time of setting up the course.
The two aspects are closely related and cannot be neglected.
The former mainly refers to the establishment of a curriculum system with good internal relevance, flexible course time and easy cultivation of innovative ability in knowledge dissemination.
The latter mainly refers to advancing the course of this system as early as possible at the time of curriculum arrangement. This is the key to success, because it is impossible for us to focus on the ability training in the third or fourth year of the undergraduate study and expect miracles, and more unlikely to expect to solve the problem by one or two courses. In particular, for the engineering higher education which aims at training outstanding engineers, the cultivation of independent innovation ability is an innovative activity that both sides of teaching must put into intensive practice and exploration. The National Excellent Course in our university, EDA Technology, is the curriculum system established for this educational reform objective. The "Digital Electronic Technology Foundation" is a part and leading course of this system. Its advance in setting up the course is the necessary condition for the whole curriculum system.
Through the experimental teaching practice and experience summarization in many years, the setting up time of the course in part of undergraduate students has been successfully advanced from the original fourth or fifth semester to the first or second semester. And other related courses
in this system, such as EDA technology, single chip microcomputer (The related textbook is the
Principle and Application Technology of Single Chip Microcomputer by Tsinghua University Press, Ming Pan, Jiye Huang, etc.), SOC on-chip system, computer interface, embedded system
and DSP and so on, are also advanced accordingly. This makes the students have the conditions
of training engineering practice and independent development ability in their second year of the
undergraduate study.
Another problem that needs to be explained here is the original design document for
demonstration examples provided by the experimental and practical projects in this textbook.
Most of the experiments in the book can provide the original designs of the demonstration
examples which have been debugged well by hardware verification. The purpose is to
successfully complete the experiment verification and design for readers. Some examples are
intended to inspire or guide readers to complete more creative designs. Some of these examples,
although seemingly creative, cannot be said to be the best or the final result, which leave readers
with a lot of space for improvement and exertion. In addition, there are a few examples that
cannot provide source codes (can only provide demo files), taking account of the copyright of the
designer outside the book authors. But these examples can still give readers valuable inspiration
in terms of feasibility, creativity and innovation of the design.
Compared with the third edition textbook of the Chinese version, the English version is
slightly different, mainly reflected in the following aspects: ¢Ù EDA development software. In
addition to using Quartus II version 13.1 and Quartus Prime Standard 16.1, there is a case of
using Quartus Prime Standard 18.1. The interface of this version is slightly different from that of
16.1, and there is no separate explanation version. The reason for retaining 13.1 is that there are
many supporting devices in this version, and that it is convenient for readers to correspond with
the Chinese version. ¢Ú There are no two chapters about the DSP Builder in the English version.
The main reason for the removal is that this part needs to be updated substantially, but it will be
quite different from the Chinese version after the update. At the same time, the length factor is
also taken into account. ¢Û A small amount of the content of 32-bit RISC CPU is added to the
CPU chapter. ¢Ü Due to the rapid development of EDA technology and FPGA, minor content
updates have been made in many parts of the book.
In addition to the above differences, the English version and the Chinese version of the third
edition can be one-to-one correspondence, not only to facilitate domestic teachers to carry out
bilingual teaching, but also to facilitate seamless docking of foreign students¡¯ teaching.
In the completion of the English edition, with the assistance of graduate students Bincong
Wu and Bingwei Chen, some pictures were redrawn, and experiments on the new experimental
development board were validated. Teacher Yu Zeng provided the English version of MIF file
editing and generation software. Student Pengda Zhang wrote HX1006A Project Builder software.
We appreciate all their work.
In order to reduce the cost and price of the book as much as possible, there is no CD. Other
information related to this book, including the supporting courseware, the source programs of the
experimental samples, the reference materials for the related design projects, the MIF file editing
and generating software mentioned in the appendix, and HX1006A ProjectBuilder software are
available free of charge. In addition, for questions on some of the tool software related to this
textbook, including the consultation of the installation, usage and other problems of Quartus,
Synplify Pro, ModelSim-Intel (including teaching courseware and experimental courseware,
FPGA pin query and order of checklist for the experimental system are free of charge, etc.),
please contact sunliangzhu@126.com, who can also help readers apply to Intel for a license for
evaluation. To discuss with the authors about EDA teaching and practice, contact
hjynet@163.com, or directly contact with the publishers (mainly for obtaining teaching
courseware, etc).
The Chinese version of VHDL corresponding to the content of Verilog HDL in this book is
EDA Technology and VHDL published by Tsinghua University Press.
Authors
In Hangzhou Dianzi University
September 2019
