Hardware-software co-verification in an undergraduate laboratory

Skills in hardware-software co-design are quickly becoming critical to product development in high-technology computer industries. Systems-on-silicon typically include a considerable amount of software as well as custom hardware and are increasingly difficult to develop using traditional techniques. To satisfy a growing demand in industry, students in electrical engineering, computer engineering, and computer science should be introduced to concepts of hardware-software co-design at the undergraduate level. This paper examines a new laboratory at the University of Missouri-Rolla in which students in Electrical and Computer Engineering are exposed to modern system design concepts through the use of hardware-software co-simulation. Key tools used in the course including a hardware prototype consisting of an 8051 microcontroller and a field programmable gate array, and a VHDL model of the prototype are discussed