Cyber laboratory for hardware logic experiments: A seamless integration of actual laboratory and remote laboratory

Abstract

Cyber Laboratory for FPGA-based logic design course is underdevelopment. It combines the existing actual hardware laboratory and the remote laboratory, with newly designed CAD services and FPGA-run services realized in the form of the Web Services. A Cloud-storage is employed to transfer large CAD files and simulation data files among laboratory FPGA-Platforms and student laptop/desktop home PCs. Design Files can be shared among students, TAs and Teachers for further consultations. Students can easily migrate from actual laboratory to remote laboratory and vice versa. The Cyber laboratory takes advantage of student PCs' active participations in the remote laboratory mode to off-load time consuming tasks, such as logic simulation, from actual laboratory's FPGA-design platforms. It is also effective to avoid network latency and to improve interactive response. Cyber laboratory uses commercial Verilog-HDL logic synthesis tools, FPGA Test-beds and logic analyzers, those are tightly integrated into specific hardware platforms and difficult to decouple. So, actual laboratory organization is still plays an important role in the remote laboratory mode. CAD Web services and FPGA-run Web services are developed to combine remote student PCs with actual laboratory FPGA-Platforms. Those handle compilation, FPGA-run and logic analyzer setup/measure tasks in the form of the Web services. As the laboratory FPGA-Platforms have to serve in two ways: actual laboratory services and remote laboratory services, two separate Virtual Machines are prepared for all laboratory PCs in the form of VM PC clusters. A VM managing PC handles the allocations of VMs to laboratory PCs, according to the usage of PCs. When the actual laboratory is in use, most PCs are assigned as the actual lab VMs. During off-class hours or at night-time, most PCs run the remote service VMs. In this way, a scalable and efficient FPGA based logic design cyber laboratory can be realized.