Object Oriented Hardware Design

This paper describes a plan to integrate current digital hardware design technology into the computer science hardware curriculum. The project will approach digital hardware design from a perspective familiar to computer science students. Techniques featuring Object Oriented Design (OOD), Object Oriented Programming (OOP), code reuse, rapid prototyping, project centered learning, and visualization will be used to facilitate learning computer hardware and embedded systems. In particular, we plan to introduce digital systems design from a programming perspective using the VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL) language, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), and modern development environments.