Utilizing VHDL for Teaching CPU Design in Engineering Education: An Approach to Build Students Capacities to Understand and Develop Complex Projects by Applying FPGA, PBL, and ML Technologies

This study was conducted to help students understand and develop complex projects applying the Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) technology, Project Based Learning (PBL) and Micro-learning (ML), which enable students to successfully accomplish complex projects in short time. The central processing unit (CPU) design is based on VHSIC (Very high-speed integrated circuit), which is used for VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language) that helps accomplishing complex projects by applying both PBL and ML methods. The mentioned PBL and ML methods facilitate students to solve problems pertaining to practical projects, specifically the problems, which cannot be theoretically solved. In addition, these methods develop students skills to address and solve complex design problems, help them achieve their desired results, and assure flexible design that can be modified. They are ideal approaches to solve engineering problems and encourage students to get self-directed independent learning. Moreover, the proposed curriculum project is based on the development of practical/real-world projects. The project presented in the current study was designed to excite, attract, and challenge students when they deal with complex project designs. This paper presents a new educational approach to computer engineering education for university students. The instructional design addresses some complex and open research projects using project-based learning; however, a new teaching method has been created by combining PBL and ML.