Curriculum on design automation at the University of Southern California

Abstract

During the 1969--70 academic year we introduced a course here at USC dealing with the use of computers in the design of digital system. This was probably the first such course of its kind instituted on a regular basis in the United States. The idea for such a course came from my colleagues in the special interests group on Design Automation of the IEEE Computer Group. Their primary goal for such a course was to instill the basic concepts of computer aided design into our new graduates. This paper reviews the major aspects related to this course on computer design. Hopefully, other schools will be motivated to develop similar courses. It is interesting to note that in a recent issue of Spectrum [5], W. R. Beam states that"... every digital designer needs to know something about design automation, even if he's only going to build a single system." For this reason, a book on design automation [1] is one of his eleven essential books for the digital designer's reference and study library.