Housekeeping
Work area
All teaching work will take place on a shared server, which students can access at any time. This shared server will host all the tools required to complete the course, including:
- cocotb for Python-based RTL verification
- Icarus Verilog simulator
- Verilator simulator
- yosys for synthesis
- Gowin (FPGA vendor) tools
Editor
We will use the VSCode Editor with the Remote SSH plugin to work on files hosted on the shared server.
Course structure
There are 12 contact hours allocated to this project. To meet CREST Gold guidelines, students are expected to make up 58 hours of independent work.
Material has been appropriately portioned into 12 sessions but note that the last few sessions will place emphasis on building and problem solving. In broad strokes, we will learn about:
- training neural networks with PyTorch
- digital design basics
- FPGAs
- machine learning computations
Schedule
We will meet once every weekend, with occasional breaks given for longer term work. Your supervisor will let you know in advance when this happens.
There will be homework set on an ad-hoc basis.
| Date | Duration (hrs) | Time (GMT+0) |
|---|---|---|
| 21/12 | 1 | 8:30 |
| 27/12 | 1 | 9:30 |
| 3/1 | 1.5 | 9:30 |
| 18/1 | 1.5 | 9 |
| 25/1 | 1 | 9 |
| 1/2 | 1.5 | 9 |
| 8/2 | 1 | 9 |
| 14/2 | 1.5 | 9:30 |
| 21/2 | 1 | 9:30 |
| 28/2 | 1 | 9:30 |
Teaching style
While I try and approach all topics from the most intuitive and ‘first-principles’ perspective, it’s possible it might not work for you. I therefore highly encourage the practice of asking questions all throughout the course as well as for you to supplement the course material with some of the resources linked on this site. Remember, this course is not self-contained, it’s merely an introduction to the weird and wonderful world(s) of digital design and machine learning. I encourage you to go off-piste!
A few more tips:
- Do your homework! I’ve deliberately crafted homework to be direct and short. The more you put in, the more you will get out of it.
- Do more beyond your homework! You’ll find that as you stretch beyond the scope of the problems I’ve given you, that’s where the real learning will happen. Try something new, break something, extend something, and then tell me about and share it with the class!
- The classroom is your friend. Imagine sitting in a room with a group of like-minded people with the same interests as you. Sounds great, right? Well, that’s exactly what our classroom is! Please share ideas, thoughts, questions and more with the group. Nothing is worth feeling embarrassed.
- Embrace discomfort. I will introduce ideas you will never have heard of and it will all seem quite complicated at first. This is fine and intentional. I find that learning works best when you’re thrown in the deep end, made to swim in the ocean as it were.
And lastly, I will repeat: do not be afraid to ask questions! Interrupt me, please. You may have heard this several times before but I’ll repeat it again: if you’ve got a question, chances are someone has the same one too. Do us all a favor and ask it!
This website
This website is meant to be a digital companion for the course, it is not a replacement. It is highly unlikely you will be able to complete the course relying solely on this website if you are a beginner to digital design.
My explanations are not comprehensive, you should always refer to a textbook for a full description of the topic. The information I give you is motivated by:
- Helping you get to those “aha!” moments
- Filling in the intuition gaps that textbooks miss
- Relevance to our course and what we’re trying to build
I’ve organized the topics and information on each page in accordance with the above guidelines. The goal is that each heading topic motivates the next, in a cascade effect.
A glossary of terms is included at the end of each session to help you in report writing and to avoid any use of imprecise language.