Practical Works for On-Line Teaching Design and Test of Digital Circuits A. Jutman, R. Ubar Tallinn Technical University ESTONIA V. Hahanov, O Skvortsova Kharkov National University of Radio Electronics, UKRAINE ABSTRACT A conception of practical works for teaching design and test of digital circuits is presented. The works cover essential topics in testing and diagnostics field. They are meant for improving the skills of students to be educated for hardware and SoC design in test related topics. Six practical works are described. The works itself are based on two diagnostic software packages that were developed at Tallinn Technical University and Kharkov National Technical University of Radio Electronics. A brief description of these packages is given. All the training materials can be accessed over Internet and therefore can be used by students at any time and any place. The free-access basis and self-contained nature makes it much easier to implement this course in foreign universities with minimum help from our side. 1. INTRODUCTION Rapid advances in areas of deep-submicron electronic technology and design automation tools enabled engineers to design larger, more complex integrated circuits. Until recently, most electronic systems consisted of one or multiple printed circuit boards, containing multiple integrated circuits (IC) each. Recent advances in IC design methods and technologies allow to integrate these complex systems onto one single IC. These developments are driving engineers toward new System on a Chip (SOC) design methodologies. SOC is seen as a major new technology and the future direction for the semiconductor industry. Within the next several years, SOC designers will cut new product development cycle time from an average of 10 months today, to just four months by 2004. The key to this forecast becoming a reality is in placing the power in the hands of a SOC designer. On the other hand, the more complex are getting electronic systems the more important become problems of test and design for testability, as costs of verification and testing are getting the major component of design and manufacturing costs of a new product. Today, design and test are no longer separate issues. The emphasis on the quality of shipped products, coupled with the growing complexity of system design, require testing issues to be considered early in the design process. At present, most VLSI and system designers know little about testing, so that companies frequently hire test experts to advise their designers on test problems, and they even pay a higher salary to the test experts than to their VLSI designers [1]. This reflects the today’s university education: everyone learns about design, but only truly dedicated students learn test. Entering into the SOC era means that test must now become an integral part of the VLSI and system design courses. The next generation of engineers involved with VLSI technology should be made aware of the importance of test. They must be specially This work is supported by the Thuringien Ministry of Science, Rese- arch and Art (Germany) and by EU V Framework project REASON. We also thank Jaan Raik for the Turbo Tester software development. trained in test technology to enable them to produce high quality, defect-free products. The National Science Foundation in USA held a workshop in 1998 where it was stated that the present level of “test coverage” in the computer engineering education in USA was inadequate. As a consequence to this statement, a special panel was organized at the International Test Conference (ITC) in 1999 how to enhance the coverage of test related topics in computer engineering education [2]. In the following we present a conception of internet-based „Home Laboratory”: a downloadable set of diagnostic tools and HTML-based practical work descriptions. The laboratory course is designed to improve the skills of students to be educated for hardware and SOC design in test related topics. The next section describes the idea of the overall concept of the training system. Short descriptions of each practical work from the package is given in Section 3. Section 4 contains information on PC-based software packages we use in our course. A couple of examples of work with PC-based tools are given in Section 5. Section 6 brings concluding remarks. 2. THE CONCEPT The laboratory training course is meant to help students to obtain hands-on experience in basics of testing and diagnostics, design for test, and designing embedded self-test architectures. This course must be an essential supplement to the theoretical knowledge students receive from lectures. All the designed training manuals can be accessed over Internet [7] and therefore can be used by students at any time and any place. The required tools can be preinstalled in universities while at home they can be downloaded for free. The free-access basis and self- contained nature makes it much easier to implement this course also in foreign universities with minimum help from our side. All laboratory training materials are composed in HTML language providing links to related topics in theoretical notes, which are a complementary part of the lab training. Therefore students can reach the exact place in the theory instantly refres- hing the theoretical knowledge for a particular part of the work. The manuals contain figures and tables to visualize the content of the works. Comprehensive examples and detailed descriptions are also very helpful for students and allow them to work fully independently of the teacher. Each software component, which is required to perform certain operations in the workflow is described extensively in help sections. A well-structured layout of the training manuals is clear and informative. Objectives – this part explains which skills and practical knowledge a student can acquire during this work. Introduction – gives the basic information about the subject of the work, depicts industrial arias where it is used, etc. Work description – introduces the general flow of the work along with tools to be used and circuits to be examined. Steps – this part contains clearly defined enumerated list of tasks students have to carry out during the work.