Presto Electro

The University of North Texas has a TON of computer labs. The General Access Computer Labs (GACL) system has 14 labs peppered throughout the campus, and that's not even including the myriad of labs tailored to less-than-general access. Every lab comes with Microsoft Office 2007, Photoshop, and a selection of web browsers.

But most labs also come with a little extra. The Technical Communication department has a Technical Communications Lab with software that is particularly great for technical writing, and the College of Music has its own lab with software more appropriate for enhancing the ability of any musician. The list goes on and on, but if you're wondering about a particular program, I recommend consulting this page.

The Electrical Engineering Department has a boatload of specialized labs. In Digital Systems Design, my computer station sits next to a tall stack of analytical equipment and power/function generators. The computer itself is loaded with all kinds of professional software for digital design, and Xilinx is the program that I have (thus far) used the most.

In Digital Systems Design, most of the projects are programmed on to Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Prototyping digital circuits onto a breadboard is really fun, and it is a great way to realize schematics, but it can be a HUGE PAIN to troubleshoot. If your circuit doesn't work on the fist go, every single wire could be a potential point of failure, and figuring out where to test first is often puzzling.

With FPGAs, you can skip the messy wiring bit. Once you've worked out the behaviors of your project, you just need to translate it to VHDL code. Writing the code for it is fairly straight-forward, and Xilinx helps out along the way with syntax checking and simulation. You can even test your design with a "test-bench" script that will apply virtual inputs to your simulated system, and then display the outputs. Test-benching is a difficult concept to explain, and I apologize for that last sentence. Here is a picture of the results from my first test-bench of the year:

The two inputs, 'a' and 'b', were provided by my test-bench script. The resulting output is 'f'. Can you guess what this circuit does? Email me if you want a hint! :)