Incorporating VHDL in teaching combinational logic circuit

Abstract

Digital System Fundamentals is an elementary course offered by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) for semester 1 undergraduate students of the Electrical Engineering programs specializing in computer, electronics, communication and instrumentation. As this course is focusing more on designing circuit rather than only knowing the theoretical part of the circuit, students are introduced with a tool which is widely used in the industry known as Very High Speed Integrated Circuits Hardware Description Language or better known as VHDL. This is also to ensure that these students are already exposed and equipped with updated technology and skills that would meet the industry requirement as well as for accreditation purposes. This paper outlines how the VHDL is incorporated in teaching combinational logic circuit of this course.

Why Are Hardware Description Languages Important for Hardware Design Courses?

“…In (Abidin et al, 2010), authors describe how the VHDL can be incorporated into the course of digital logic to reinforce the student's theoretical concepts. This should target undergraduate students majoring in electrical engineering in general and computer, electronics, communication, as well as instrumentation, in particular.…”

A Web-Based Visualization and Animation Platform for Digital Logic Design

“…Each student had to minimize eight functions (named F 1 to F 8 ), whereas the index in the function name corresponds to its difficulty level. These functions are 1) F 1 = Σm(0, 3) + Σd(1, 2) 2) F 2 = Σm(0, 1, 2, 3, 13, 14) + Σd (12,15) 3) F 3 = Σm(0, 1, 2, 3) + Σd(9, 11) 4) F 4 = Σm(4, 5, 14, 15) + Σd(7, 13) 5) F 5 = Σm(4, 5, 7, 13, 14) + Σd(9, 11, 15) 6) F 6 = Σm(0, 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 13) + Σd(10, 11) 7) F 7 = Σm(0, 2, 5, 10, 12, 15) + Σd(8, 13) 8) F 8 = Σm(0, 2, 10, 12, 13, 15) + Σd (5,8) The 25 students of Group A had to minimize these functions manually. The 24 students of Group B used DLD-VISU to do the same.…”

“…Several papers can be found that focus on DLD course construction [1]- [3], the usage of commercial tools and hardware description languages (HDL) for learning DLD [4], [5], and employing programmable logic to enhance the effectiveness of DLD learning process [6], [7]. Using HDL and commercial design tools as learning technologies is very useful.…”