Remote Laboratory for System on Chip Design based on FPGAs

The incorporation of FPGA-based System on Chip design courses in the curriculum of undergraduate and master's degree programs is becoming more and more common. The cost of development boards is prohibitive for most students, which is detrimental to their academic performance by limiting the number of hours they can devote to experimentation. The availability of a remote lab would solve this problem. This paper presents the infrastructure of a remote laboratory for the design of FPGA-based SoCs. This infrastructure is used in the teaching of a subject of the last year of an engineering degree. The environment allows the use of evaluation boards and development tools with full functionality. In addition, users can conveniently reserve the boards via a web application for use outside class hours and the infrastructure manages the simultaneous use of several boards, preventing users from interfering with each other's work. These advantages are complemented by the ability to virtualize user I/O interfaces and to use remote instrumentation to measure the response of the design.