Teaching Reconfigurable Computing Theory and Practice

Porrmann M, Niemann J-C. Teaching Reconfigurable Computing Theory and Practice. In: International Workshop on Reconfigurable Computing Education (on CD). 2006.Reconfigurable hardware is often used to enrich classical digital design and VLSI courses that target ASIC designs. In this way, students get a better feeling of what they are designing than when just looking at VHDL simulations. But teaching reconfigurable computing requires more than just examples of ASIC prototyping. Students need to get an in depth knowledge of the special features and requirements of reconfigurable architectures in order to be able to design reconfigurable systems that are coequal to ASIC or microprocessor based designs – not only in economics but also in performance and energy consumption. In this paper, we present two lectures that focus on reconfigurable computing and the associated labs, which range from simple CPLD designs to complex dynamically reconfigurable controllers with real-time requirements. During these courses our students gain step by step a broad insight into reconfigurable computing