Monday sessions will be held in room S4. The rest of the week the sessions will be in room S1.

The afternoons, between 14:30 and 16:30, will be dedicated to solving the exercises provided. We will be available during this time to help with any problems that you may have.

If you want to be given the points associated with the course, complete the exercises by Friday afternoon. Once you complete any of the exercises, you can contact one of us (Gordon or Koen) for them to be marked.

Only Tuesday's, Wednesday's and Thursday's exercises are obligatory. Also, note that the exercises marked with an asterisk (*) are more difficult and you are not required to solve them to get the points.

• Monday's exercises (not obligatory, but helpful)
• Tuesday's exercises
• Wednesday's exercises
• Thursday's exercises

Introduction

A short overview of hardware and how it can be described and designed.

Arithmetic Circuits

More about the design of circuits, with particular emphasis on arithmetic circuits.

Verilog I

An introduction to the Verilog HDL as a typical simulation based HDL. Structural and behavioural descriptions. Test benches for testing.

Verilog II

The simulation cycle in more detail. An overview of high-level behavioural synthesis of Verilog.

Lava I

The use of a functional programming language to describe hardware. Parametrised circuits, circuit combinators.

Lava II

Translating state machines into hardware using Lava.

Hardware Compilation

The compilation of an imperative language Mini-Flash to hardware.

Advanced Hardware Compilation

Adding assignment and scoping to Mini-Flash. Combining different programming languages to describe hardware. Generic circuit descriptions.

Conclusions

A closing discussion about hardware design.

• Niklaus Wirth, Hardware Compilation: Translating Programs Into Circuits, IEEE Computer, 31(6), pp 25-31. June 1998.

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• Gerard M. Blair's Verilog - Accellerating Digital Design
• Verilog quick reference card.
• Mike Gordon's The Semantic Challenge of Verilog HDL
• Verilog's simulation semantics from IEEE 1364

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• Koen Claessen and Mary Sheeran's Lava tutorial.

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• Ian Page's Constructing Hardware-Software Systems from a Single Description describing Handel.
• Ian Page and Wayne Luk's Compiling Occam into Hardware.
• Gérard Berry's A Hardware Implementation of Pure Esterel

HDLs in general

• HDL resources
• Hardware Description and Verification - The web-page of an undergraduate course at Chalmers

Verilog and VHDL

• Daniel C Hyde's Verilog handbook.
• A number of articles including an interesting collection of VHDL-Verilog comparisons.
• Verilog.Net has quite a lot of Verilog documentation and tutorials.
• Verilog FAQ.
• VHDL FAQ.

Other HDLs

• The Lava page.
• Loads of papers about Handel.
• Papers about Esterel