The School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, at the University of Queensland keeps abreast of the changes in the electronics industry with the use of Altium technology.
“Students of today do not want to wire up simple circuits on a breadboard but be working in an FPGA-based environment with advanced tools like that provided by Altium”
- By Len Payne
Computer Systems Engineering Lab Supervisor,
School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Queensland
Over the past few years, the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering has seen an industry trend in the rising use of FPGAs in digital design. The students at the school’s Computer Systems Engineering laboratory however, were still wiring up chips on breadboards to create simple circuits. While this is useful in developing practical skills and understanding of the operation of various logic circuits, it is painstaking with students spending excessive time in finding and correcting wiring errors. Considering the industry demand for far higher-level electronics design skills, the school chose to implement Altium’s electronics design system. One hundred and eleven second year students enrolled in 2005 are now benefiting.
Key challenges
The constant changes in technology make it challenging for a university to quickly adapt course structures and curriculums to keep up with industry trends. Furthermore, the students were not interested in spending an inordinate amount of time ‘wiring up’ a circuit before they can examine its operation. They are highly computer literate and want to be able to spend more time in the design and test phases and less on the mechanical discipline of breadboard wiring.
The staff realized that the advancement of FPGA technology and its use in digital systems design was surpassing their course direction, but also presented a solution to their course needs.
Meeting the challenges
Altium Designer, in combination with Altium’s FPGA-based development board – the NanoBoard™ – met the school’s design needs. The Lab made an extensive evaluation of the technology before implementation. The system initially appeared complex but after coming to grips with the basic concepts and methodology, the system became surprisingly intuitive. Some of the benefits include the ability to enter logic circuits using a familiar schematic editing environment rather than VHDL, FPGA device independence, and the versatility and completeness of the NanoBoard.
The results
The choice to implement Altium technology meets the growing industry trend towards embedded systems design on FPGAs. The Lab developed a logic workstation which connects to the User Headers of the NanoBoard. This gives students physical interaction with their circuit but their time in the laboratory is no longer spent on fixing wiring errors. The reduction in ‘wiring up’ also benefits staff. They can increase the size, complexity, and number of logic circuits that the students are asked to design and implement.
Another benefit is that the students can tackle their design projects because the software can be accessed from their home computers. The school provides a license to the student that expires at the end of the semester.
The benefits that students gain will flow on into their third and fourth years. With a better understanding of the building blocks used in digital logic design, laboratory practicals and projects can be more advanced. The third year course will introduce VHDL, analysis and synthesis of digital circuits and simulation and synthesis with VHDL, while the fourth year course will delve deeper into simulation, synthesis, placement and routing with VLSI and FPGA technologies.
About the university
The University of Queensland (UQ) is one of Australia's premier learning and research institutions and is renowned nationally and internationally for the quality of its teaching and research. With over 30,000 students enrolled, it is the largest and oldest university in Queensland and has produced generations of graduates who have gone on to become leaders in all areas of society and industry.
The university’s School of Information Technology & Electrical Engineering (ITEE) has an ambition to embrace an integrated 'science, technology and engineering' framework as a national leader. They seek to reach and sustain international visibility in research excellence whilst meeting education and outreach responsibilities within the university's mission. ITEE invested in Altium Designer* design software, because the combination of Protel’s PCB design capabilities with the system-level FPGA design capabilities of Nexar created a powerful, single, integrated electronic product development system that caters for the needs of students today and into the future.
Altium's NanoBoard, a reconfigurable nano-level development board, provides students with the opportunity of working with real hardware and software running in real time. With the combination of Altium Designer and the NanoBoard, students at UQ are able to learn and have hands-on interaction with the latest technology available for electronic product development, equipping them fully for the future requirements of their industry.
For more information about the University of Queensland or the School of Information Technology & Electrical Engineering (ITEE), visit www.uq.edu.au and www.itee.uq.edu.au