Online Course – Certified Professional Internship in FPGA Design for Embedded Systems from the University of Colorado Boulder

Discover the secrets of FPGA in embedded systems. Enhance your career opportunities and build better systems by acquiring skills in FPGA design.

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Professional Certificate

Intermediate level

No prior knowledge required

Time to complete the course

7-day free trial

No unnecessary risks

Skills you will acquire in the course

  • Acquire proficiency in using field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)
  • Verilog, VHDL, and RTL design for FPGA and CPLD architectures
  • FPGA development tool flow: specification, synthesis, simulation, compilation, programming and debugging
  • Using soft and hard processors and operating system options
  • FPGA system engineering, software-hardware integration, and testing
  • IP development and third-party IP integration
  • VHDL and Verilog coding
  • Programmable logic synthesis and simulation
  • Static timing analysis and programming of FPGA devices
  • Building a programmable soft processor system on a chip

What you will learn in the course

Courses for which the course is suitable

  • FPGA Engineer
  • Hardware Engineer
  • Integrated Software Engineer
  • Systems Engineer
  • IP key
  • SoC Solution Developer
  • Test Engineer
  • VHDL/Verilog programmer
  • Software-Hardware Integration Engineer
  • Electronics project developer

Internship – 4-part course series

The goal of the course is to gain proficiency in using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) to create prototypes or products for a variety of applications. Although FPGA design can be a complex subject, we will present it in a way that, with little effort, makes it easy to learn the basic concepts, while challenging the more experienced designer.

We will explore the complexities, capabilities, and trends of FPGA and CPLD. We will practice skills in:

  • Conception
  • Design
  • Implementation
  • Debugging

We will learn about the details related to integrated IP and processor cores, including trade-offs between IP acquisition and implementation. Projects will include the latest software tools and FPGA development hardware platforms to develop a broad view of the capabilities of programmable SoC solutions.

Topics include:

  • Verilog, VHDL, and RTL design for FPGA and CPLD architectures
  • FPGA development tool flow: specification, synthesis, simulation, compilation, programming, and debugging
  • Integrated processors optimized for integrated software
  • Using soft and hard processors and operating system options
  • FPGA system engineering, software-hardware integration, and testing
  • IP development and third-party IP integration

The final course will give the student an opportunity to practice and apply the concepts learned by building FPGA systems based on inexpensive evaluation boards.

Hands-on Learning Project

Students will practice building and testing multiple FPGA projects using industry-standard hardware development tools by applying skills such as VHDL and Verilog coding, programmable logic synthesis and simulation, static timing analysis, and FPGA device programming. The culmination of these efforts will be building a soft-programmable processor system-on-a-chip using the DE10-Lite evaluation board.

Details of the courses that make up the specialization

Introduction to FPGA design for embedded systems

Course 1

Duration: 18 hours

Rating: 4.6 (1,169 ratings)

What you’ll learn

  • Describe what FPGA is and how this technology has evolved.
  • Determine how to choose the best FPGA architecture for a particular application
  • Use the most advanced FPGA development tools and solve critical digital design problems with FPGAs

Skills you will develop

  • Primacy test
  • Verilog
  • Digital design
  • Static time analysis

Hardware Description Languages ​​for FPGA Design

Course 2

Duration: 36 hours

Rating: 4.4 (572 ratings)

What you’ll learn

  • Describe the role of hardware description languages ​​(HDLs) in design input and verification for FPGAs and ASICs.
  • Leverage HDL software tools for FPGA development

Skills you will develop

  • FPGA logic design
  • Writing code in VHDL
  • Design banking tests
  • Writing code in Verilog
  • Simulating designs on FPGA

Softcore processors and IP for FPGAs

Course 3

Duration: 10 hours

Rating: 4.0 (89 ratings)

What you’ll learn

  • Create a hardware design for a Nios II softcore processor using the Altera development flow
  • Understand the benefits and steps of implementing adaptive instruction on the Nios II softcore processor
  • List the types of IP available for FPGA
  • Use simulation with ModelSim to validate FPGA design

Skills you will develop

  • Simulation for verification
  • Copyright integration
  • Programmable logic design
  • Softcore processor design
  • Software design for softcore processors

Capstone FPGA: Building FPGA Projects

Course 4

Duration: 29 hours

Rating: 4.3 (22 ratings)

What you’ll learn

  • Create a working FPGA design using Quartus Prime and run it on an evaluation board
  • Understand and master all aspects of FPGA development, including conception, design, implementation, and simulation
  • Create an FPGA system-on-chip design based on a Nios II Softcore processor, RAM and FLASH memory, and several peripherals
  • Familiar with FGPA development flow, especially in the case of SoC including software development flow

Skills you will develop

  • Programmable logic design
  • Softcore processor design