Teaching HW/SW codesign with a Zynq ARM/FPGA SoC

© 2017 IEEE. In this paper we describe a lab session-based hardware/software (HW/SW) codesign course for implementing embedded systems. The goals of the course are to teach the fundamental concepts of embedded system design, develop hands-on HW/SW codesign skills, and to show that there are many possible ways to explore the design space. The reason behind choosing HW/SW codesign approach is that it brings the best of the two worlds: the flexibility of SW and the power/energy/computation efficiency of HW. As an example project, students codesign the well-known RSA public-key cryptosystem in the Xilinx Zybo boards that contain a Xilinx 7-series FPGA coupled with an embedded ARM processing unit. Students are required to explore the design space, weigh the various alternatives and take design decisions. Besides, the project cultivates non-technical skills such as team building and management, sharing of work-load, decision making, presentation and technical report writing