An innovative experimental teaching method of hardware-software co-design-Taking a hardware accelerator of neural network using FPGA

In order to cultivate students' software and hardware collaborative design thinking and system construction ability, this paper proposes an innovative experimental teaching method of software and hardware collaborative design to better develop students'sys-tem view. We create a student-centered learning environment and adopt a mixed teaching method whereby experiment courses are conducted in a “traditional + discussion + scientific research-driven” manner. The course will focus on the design of the “Convolutional Neural Network for Handwritten Digit Recognition”, and run through curriculums that involve from software to hardware, algorithms to systems, and design to verification. We explore teaching methods that revolve around principles of using experiments to derive theories, and using theories to guide experiments. Besides, we establish an online laboratory that can provide an experiment platform (MOOE) for “PC+ARM+FPGA”, which realizes the seamless integration of physical operations, semi-physical emulators, and virtual models. Through investigation and research, most students who have completed this course have formed a good knowledge of computer systems and the necessary comprehensive development ability.