Teaching Heterogeneous Computing with System-Level Design Methods

We present our work at Columbia University teaching the design and programming of heterogeneous computing architectures with SLD methods. Over the past eight years, we have developed a new course, System-on-Chip Platforms, with the main goal of preparing students to contribute to the new economy of heterogeneous computing and open-source hardware. The course was one of the first nationwide to introduce the use of commercial high-level synthesis tools for the design of application-specific hardware accelerators. We also introduced the idea of structuring the final project as a design-space exploration contest that combines aspects of collaborative engineering and design for reusability.