A Modular and Specifications Oriented Digital Circuit Design Laboratory

A laboratory for a second undergraduate course in digital logic design is described based on the philosophy of decomposing the circuits into control and datapath portions.Modular designs are strongly encouraged by requiring later designs to need some of the same pieces of earlier designs.The unique aspect of this laboratory is that students are required to generate designs that meet criteria other than correct functionality; both performance and area are specified.This gives the students a good idea of what life as a circuit designer might be like.They are faced with the real-world problem of speed versus size.This often leads to friendly competitions between students on whose design is smaller or faster.The specifications and difficulty of the assignments force students to use proper design techniques.The remainder of the paper will focus on the experiences gained both while teaching and taking the laboratory.