Abstract
Curricula in computer engineering, computer science, and other related fields include several courses about hardware design. Examples of these courses are digital logic design, computer architecture, microprocessors, computer interfacing, hardware design, embedded systems, switching theorem, and others. In order for the students to realize the concepts taught in such courses, practical track should be reinforced along with the theoretical track. Many universities offer to their students labs in which they can practice hardware design. However, students need more than that: they need tools that enable them to design, model, simulate, synthesize, and implement hardware designs. Although high-level programming languages like Java and C++ could be an option, it might be a tedious task to use them for this mission. Fortunately, hardware-description languages (HDLs) have been specifically devised for this purpose. This paper shows some of the great features of HDLs and compare using them with using C++ for illustrating digital concepts through salient examples.
Highlights
Digital circuits are important components in the modern civilization
We provide the Very-High-Speed Integrated Circuits Hardware Description Language (VHDL) substitute that students can use throughout their course of study
We highlight the importance of hardware description languages in teaching hardware design courses
Summary
Digital circuits are important components in the modern civilization. Embedded systems can be found in every aspect of our today’s life. Students are required to develop their knowledge by building complex circuits in different technological aspects We emphasize the importance of hardware-description languages from a different perspective, where we enrich our discussion using three common examples of digital devices, namely the decoder, multiplexer, and random-access memory (RAM). We first use these three examples to illustrate how ordinary high-level programming languages can be used to model such logical devices. The deficiencies of these ordinary high-level programming languages will be obvious when compared to hardware-description languages that were created to model digital circuits.
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