The paper selects reusable operations over binary and ternary vectors that are frequently used in many important practical applications (that are explicitly indicated) and suggests methods to implement them in hardware accelerators. Many examples are given. The developed architectures are organized as either combinational or sequential designs. The following steps are elaborated: 1) suggesting methods and archi...
This paper is devoted to identifying online teaching strategies appropriate for blended and face-to-face higher STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education. The study is inspired by the experience gained during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, which forced many higher education institutions worldwide to shift abruptly to distance education and try many new tools, teaching methods, and stra...
In this paper, we aim to identify online teaching and learning practices that would be beneficial for blended and traditional on-campus education within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) courses. Our university, as well as the majority of higher education institutions worldwide, has had few to no experience in delivering full online courses before 2020. The teaching process was, however, ...
Many practical data-processing algorithms fail to execute efficiently on general-purpose CPUs (Central Processing Units) due to the sequential matter of their operations and memory bandwidth limitations. To achieve desired performance levels, reconfigurable (FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array)-based) hardware accelerators are frequently explored that permit the processing units’ architectures to be better adap...
It is well known that network-based parallel data processing algorithms are well suited to implementation in reconfigurable hardware recurring to either Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) or Programmable Systems-on-Chip (PSoC). The intrinsic parallelism of these devices makes it possible to execute several data-independent network operations in parallel. However, the approaches to designing the respective sy...
Este artigo descreve a implementação de circuitos reconfiguráveis que suportam interacção com monitores VGA. A visualização dos resultados e dos dados intermédios num monitor VGA facilita a depuração de circuitos realizados em FPGA e aumenta as potencialidades de interacção com o utilizador. O projecto desenvolvido foi utilizado no âmbito das disciplinas Computação Reconfigurável (4º ano de LECT) e Sistemas Dig...
Os problemas combinatórios têm uma gama extremamente ampla de aplicações numa variedade de áreas de engenharia, incluindo teste de circuitos electrónicos, reconhecimento de padrões, síntese lógica, etc. Muitos dos problemas de interesse pertencem às classes NP-hard e NP-complete, o que implica que os algoritmos relevantes têm no pior caso complexidade exponencial. Este facto impede a solução de muitos problemas...
With the advent of new types of programmable logic devices (PLDs), the process of digital system design has undergone a notable revision during the past few decades. Actually, many digital systems are implemented with the aidof high-capacity PLDs (FPGAs, in particular). The FPGA market continues to grow resulting in a wide variety of available devices. In this context the new concept of reconfigurable computing...
The paper describes original methods and novel tools (namely animated tutorials, projects and organization of data on WebCT) that have been used for teaching disciplines on reconfigurable computing and advanced digital systems. Many examples are provided, which demonstrate how to get access to all the available materials and how these materials help the students to understand many different aspects of hardware ...
The paper presents a tutorial, which covers new methods and tools that are used in educational process of Electronics and Telecommunications Department of Aveiro University for the disciplines devoted to the design of reconfigurable systems. Three following basic topics have been considered: 1) FPGAs of state-of-the-art Spartan-II/Spartan-IIE families that possess a number of advantages...