CS448H - Special Topics in Computer Graphics
Topic: Agile Hardware Design
Instructor: Pat Hanrahan CA: Ross Daly Slack: 448h.slack.com Office Hours: 9:00am-11:00am Monday/Wednesday Gates 392 CA email: rdaly525@stanford.edu
Location: 300-303 Time: 1:30-2:50pm Tue/Thu Consent of instructor, enrollment limited to 20
Designing hardware is becoming a hot topic again. At one level, platforms like the Arduino and the Maker Movement have generated great interest in building new kinds of computing devices. At another level, major companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are increasingly launching major hardware design efforts. They are finding they can build unique products which combine innovative hardware with software. However, hardware design is still difficult and expensive, as evidenced by the fact that there are relatively few hardware startups compared to software startups.
The goal of this course is to explore different approaches for making it easier to design hardware. In particular, tools inspired by Agile Software Design which encourages rapid experimentation and fast prototyping. We will assume no previous experience in hardware design; the course will teach you how to program FPGAs from scratch. We will use the Lattice Icestick, an $22 FPGA board that you can program from your laptop (one will be provided). This board uses the Lattice ICE40 fpga, which is the only FPGA with an open source tool chain. Projects in the course will involve building new tools that make it fast and easy to program this FPGA.
This course is targeted to systems and graphics students interested in learning more about hardware design. No previous hardware design experience is required, although experience with platforms like the Arduino is a plus. We encourage students with a strong software background and no hardware experience to take the course. It may be taken for 3-4 credits. Two individual short programming assignments and a team-based final project must be completed.
Note the first class will be on Thu Jan 12th.