An Evolving Curriculum to Match the Evolution of Reconfigurable Computing Platforms

Reconfigurable platforms have evolved from "sea of gates" architectures into diverse System on a Chip (SoC) platforms with embedded processor cores and dedicated hard- ware components. This evolution has greatly increased the performance of this technology, but creates challenges when teaching the new technology to Computer Science and Elec- trical Engineering graduate students. Previously, knowledge of Hardware Description Languages (HDLs) was the only prereq- uisite for advanced courses in reconfigurable computing, bu t now knowledge of embedded processors, complex tool suites, and hardware/software co-design form the basic foundation of education in this field. At the University of Colorado at Boul der we have partnered with Xilinx, a leading manufacturer of FPGAs, and endeavored to create a curriculum that addresses these challenges. Through a graduate level embedded systems course that hybridizes microprocessor-based software with dedicated hardware and various seminar courses on reconfigurable com- puting, we have been able to observe how students best learn subject matter in this area and what subject matter they find challenging. In this paper, we describe our experience teaching reconfigurable computing with an emphasis on programmable SoC design.