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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to FPGA Design for Embedded Systems by University of Colorado Boulder

4.6
stars
1,138 ratings

About the Course

This course can also be taken for academic credit as ECEA 5360, part of CU Boulder’s Master of Science in Electrical Engineering degree. Programmable Logic has become more and more common as a core technology used to build electronic systems. By integrating soft-core or hardcore processors, these devices have become complete systems on a chip, steadily displacing general purpose processors and ASICs. In particular, high performance systems are now almost always implemented with FPGAs. This course will give you the foundation for FPGA design in Embedded Systems along with practical design skills. You will learn what an FPGA is and how this technology was developed, how to select the best FPGA architecture for a given application, how to use state of the art software tools for FPGA development, and solve critical digital design problems using FPGAs. You use FPGA development tools to complete several example designs, including a custom processor. If you are thinking of a career in Electronics Design or an engineer looking at a career change, this is a great course to enhance your career opportunities. Hardware Requirements: You must have access to computer resources to run the development tools, a PC running either Windows 7, 8, or 10 or a recent Linux OS which must be RHEL 6.5 or CentOS Linux 6.5 or later. Either Linux OS could be run as a virtual machine under Windows 8 or 10. The tools do not run on Apple Mac computers. Whatever the OS, the computer must have at least 8 GB of RAM. Most new laptops will have this, or it may be possible to upgrade the memory....

Top reviews

CB

Jun 11, 2023

This was a great course, especially for someone who has never studied anything about FPGAs before. Timothy is an excellent lecturer whose practical experience in the industry comes through.

LS

May 20, 2020

Great course! It is an introductory level, however, deep aspects of Intel Quartus Prime are studied and used. This course also gives a broad perspective overview of FPGA and CPLD families.

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26 - 50 of 283 Reviews for Introduction to FPGA Design for Embedded Systems

By Guift

•

Jun 7, 2018

Good to get to know the quartus prime software and get started into fpga design.

After completing this course, Quartus prime feel way less aliens, I think I have a solid grasp as to what I need to look for to continue my fpga journey and VHDL seem way easier.

(You don't learn to make VHDL or Verilog code in this course)

Critic :

the voice isn't always synced with the video

there a a few error in the quiz question

Some part could be introduced in a better way (time analysis definition could use some animation)

Was intended to be a 4 course series, I'm not sure if they will continues

By KARTHIK R

•

Jul 2, 2020

Received minimal support for issues that came up during the course. I think the instructors need to be active in resolving issues that may come up during installation and execution.

By Andrea M

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Jul 29, 2019

For university students in the field of Engineering the course is quite basic, but it is good for having a small introduction on FPGA design, issues, and market.

The main concern is the price (too high, for me it is worth 20$ or something around), and the fact that in the course they don't explain the background of some steps that they do in the Software (it is simply "Select this", "Click this", etc.)

By Xiaohang G

•

Aug 23, 2020

no professor answering my any questions

By Carlo D

•

Dec 5, 2020

This course is just a very slow paced and boring tutorial on Quartus Prime. Every lesson is simply a sequence of button to be pressed in Quartus, with no real explanation on why things are done and no room for thinking. Quiz questions are very bad written and show lack of interest in this course. Peer reviewed assignments are a waste of time and mainly consist of screenshots of Quartus reports. If you know digital design already, there is nothing to learn here. Equally, if you don't know it, this won't help you. Not recommented at all, in particular if you hope to learn something about FPGAs.

By Gasper

•

Apr 28, 2018

This course is just weird, too much content crammed into "powerpoint" style of modern education. Buy a book, watch youtube fpga content lecture videos, join a university class,...

By Steaven M M

•

Mar 23, 2021

Resource files not updated or checked to coincide with videos. Videos does not always prompt you when to take screenshots in week 4 until peer assessment section.

By Carlos M

•

Aug 17, 2018

Software cannot be downloaded

By Bijan K

•

Nov 12, 2017

The subject for each session is selected carefully and the gradual heaviness of the discussions is very well organized, so that student feels comfortable to move on.

Flawless presentation (thank you Tim!) and step by step manner of the discussions are the reasons I could keep up with the course eagerly.

I look forward to take the rest of the courses of this specialization.

Thanks Coursera!

By Khaled H

•

May 29, 2023

The "Introduction to FPGA Design for Embedded Systems" course surpassed my expectations. It offered a well-structured curriculum, practical exercises, and exceptional instructor support. The hands-on approach and up-to-date content made it a valuable learning experience. The course community fostered collaboration and knowledge sharing. Highly recommended!

By Patrick D

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Feb 5, 2018

Great course! Enthusiastic instructor who gives you what you need to get started step-by-step. You can learn so much on your own once you have a board, a tool and a detailed walkthrough.

The section comparing the different families of FPGAs was a good summary of what's out there and their basic differences.

I can't wait for the HDL follow up class.

By Roger P

•

Jun 22, 2020

I was actually pleasantly surprised... I am a chip designer and embedded systems software developer... this class gave us the basics and was a survey of FPGA design methodologies and FPGA architecture. While certainly not as comprehensive as a college course, I'd say it was 30% of the knowledge for 20% of the time at 3% of the cost.

By Victor G

•

Mar 5, 2019

Pretty challenging course, but very helpful if you are parallel starting with real design or have to work with some ready design. I also very appreciate an overview of different FPGA and CPLD platforms, selection criteria of them.

So I am waiting for anounced next course, about Verilog and VHDL. It is exactly what i need right now.

By Divyang T

•

Jul 25, 2019

The course offers a great deal of in depth knowledge about FPGA. It also makes you familiar with the use of Quartus Prime Software. A big thank you to the professor because the course content is really specific and insightful. All in all a good course for a fresher to understand the depth of Programmable Logic Devices.

By Alan T

•

Dec 25, 2017

Good course, understanding of logic gates, adders, and Microcontroller architecture needed. This is the only online FPGA MOOC, so well done to Boulder for branching out. It would be nice to see the full specialisation available.

By Claude B

•

Jun 12, 2023

This was a great course, especially for someone who has never studied anything about FPGAs before. Timothy is an excellent lecturer whose practical experience in the industry comes through.

By PANG I H

•

Nov 7, 2018

I do not recommend for busy working personal. I have to admit I have time problem spent the extra hours to search for external knowledge to complete some of the assignment which wasn't covered in the course. For example, knowledge of how to simplify a 4 bit adder require some level of k-map simplification know how, which forced me to spent the extra hours to google and learn. I originally purchase the cert because it was needed in some of the companies new project. After looking at the time pressure and deadline of the course, I decided to spent time study FPGA at intel youtube and post question at their technical support forum to get my job done.

By Adwait K

•

Mar 19, 2018

Not a course to learn a great deal about FPGA's. Seems like an elaborated explanation of a reference manual to use the Quartus Prime software.

By Chaudhari, P

•

Jul 23, 2022

Its just "blindly follow what the instrutctor tells you" kind of a course. I've been frustrated at the way things were approached at. Without sharing the MOTIVATION of doing something, how can you expect students to develop interest in minute details?

Sure, you learn something along the way (like some tools and how to operate an INTEL software) because you have to complete the assigments. But that is not enjoyable at all.

I have a strong background and experience in digital electronics and microcontrollers. Still I couldn't follow many of the things in this course because it was so hapazard.

The interesting and important topics such as "timing constraints problem" was not explained at all in details. There are some diagrams and the instructor is like a computer generated voice narrating the slides. Look at some lectures by professors such as gregory plett from colorado boulder - learn from them how to teach a new concept.

Hands-on is useless without the theoretical and intellectual journey that lead us to it.

By Ekaterina S

•

Sep 6, 2023

I didn't like this course. Most of the course I was supposed to copy operations which were done by the instructor in the video.Because I didn't understand overal goal of the operations, I took me super long to do. For most of the thime I didn't understand most of instructor's goals and reasons. This way I didn't learn anything except how to install the application. As a teacher myself I would not recommend this course to anyone who doesn't know the material already.

By Hussein A

•

Aug 7, 2023

Boring, feels like a very very bad walkthrough video. doesn't even tell you the big picture or what you're about to do. Instead just gives you straight up steps with no thought.

By Nigel B

•

Jun 25, 2021

I found the course very good, and of definite practical benefit to me in my work. It is possible that somewhere out there is training for free (with no peer review, no forum, etc), but the structured training and deadlines helped ensure that I got the right information needed to use the Quartus toolchain, and had a go at using them for an extermely reasonable fee - some face-to-face courses on VHDL that I have been on have cost a factor of 70 times more, and have been inflexible and more disruptive to my work life by having to travel some distance on a handful of days to receive the training. This on-line course was indeed demanding (I have a demanding job, and two young children on top of that), but I managed to get it done on time. WIthout the deadlines it probably would have fallen by the wayside.

By Risikesvar G

•

Mar 12, 2024

The course itself is structured in a comprehensive way and the discussion forms always turn out to be more helpful than you would have thought. If there's one thing that can be improved is that the original lecture video posted are from 2017... yep that's vastly outdated in 2024. I had the Quartus Prime software complain and suggest that i should upgrade to new versions, use newers IPs, newer templates, newers NIOS processors etc...I also experienced some compatability issues because of this... for example the quartus prime software looks bugged out in win 11(some dialog box are not fully shown, texts being truncated etc..). Overall the content itself it still good as they are the basics to the FPGA world.

By Bhushan C P

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Dec 11, 2017

Ultimate course for FPGA learners those who want to understand complete process of FPGA design for Industry, education & research. Prof. Timothy Scherr and his team had put lot of efforts to make this course perfect. This course is helpful for newbie as well as professionals, As some points explained in this course covers lot of depth in field of FPGA for embedded system with simple explanation.

Thank very much Prof. Timothy Scherr and his teamand also coursera team for bringing such High quality education to all over the world.

By Lalit B

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Jun 9, 2020

The course is beyond as per the expectations!

The course "Introduction to FPGA Design for Embedded Systems" offered by colorado university is really a wonderful one, especially for the FPGA aspirants and beginners. the course provide a detail inside about the programmable logic devices. the best part was the hands-on practice of the design tool (Quartus Prime). The course flow is good and videos are descriptive. Special thanx to instructor prof. Timothy Scherr. he is a good teacher and his way of explanation is fantastic.