CprE281 Digital Logic

Course Overview

Professor: Dr. Alexander Stoytchev
Semester: Fall 2018
Tools Used: Altera DE2-115 FPGA, Intel Quartus Prime
Class Rating: 8/10. TA’s could have done a much better job at preparing for the class they are supposed to teach
Class Difficulty (1-5): 3

Course Experience

CprE281 was essentially a pathway into the foundations of Computer Engineering. Starting off with basic boolean algebra, Dr. Stoytchev went quick through the material. Within a few blinks of the eye, you are presented with flip flops, counters and then eventually registers. While it is not necessarily a hard class, it can be intimidating to Sophomores as the effort to succeed in this class is significantly higher than classes they typically take.

Exams were always interesting. Students are presented with 12 questions, but only 10 are graded. The idea is that you can choose which questions you feel more comfortable answering. While the maximum score is 120, the score ends up concatenated to 100. Any student that gets above 100 points is recognized by Dr. Stoytchev and awarded with a TA position in the next semester that he teaches.

The final project will be a stressful time for students who are used to procrastinating their work. It typically takes more time than one thinks. I ended up recreating the Tiny Encryption Algorithm to be run on the DE2-115 FPGA.