Augmenting lectures in the classroom is desired when teaching analog system design. We present an all-in-one open source software suite and FPAA boards as one solution. The tools are capable of simulating and getting experimental results of mixed signal designs discussed in class. There are two options for students to get data, either remotely or locally. There is an option for students to create their own blocks, which will be shared with the class. Our goal is to empower students to gain intuition of system design and appreciate the value of circuit reuse.
The Electronic Design Automation (EDA) community is faced with an exponential increase in the complexity of the problems that it has to solve. These problems challenge the EDA community to find innovative techniques for training the next generation of researchers. This work discuss how international contests in EDA can play a pivotal role in the education and industry practices. We discuss the impact of our these contests on bridging the gap between industry and academia, training of the graduate students and building collaborations between different researchers. We compare the impact of papers originated from the effort of team winners in such contests compared to the best papers in annual International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) conference and Design Automation Conference (DAC). Finally, we also discuss the impact of the contests on the industry organizers and how they benefit from them.
