The bottom line is that to better prepare engineering students for careers in design verification, our universities need our help. They need commercial-grade hardware and software to more closely align students’ learning experience with what is actually going on in industry. They need products that can be easily implemented for use in courses, laboratories, graduate projects, and research to make the learning process easier and more interesting. They need assistance with curriculum and program development, internships, Ph.D. sponsorships, research contracts, funding, course involvement, and commercial partnerships.
Per Dr. Matthew Swabey of the University of Southampton: “It really puts a fire into the students if a company cares and spends time talking to them and paying attention.”
One of the key elements of a successful university program is to provide a complete Solution that includes all of the essential hardware and software for co-verification. A program should be easy to participate in; products should be easy to obtain and to implement. In other words, the program should be User-friendly. The program should allow for thinking outside of the box to find a Creative means to solve any problem.
Research, special projects, papers, curriculum development, and finding talent are just a few examples of Collaboration, an important element for gaining Exposure by the company into the university or vice versa. Using a company’s products and technology for teaching and research, references in papers and research, logos on websites, providing training, and hosting workshops are some of the examples of creating awareness for the university, the students, the company, and the company’s products. Providing software updates and technical Support is equally essential.
A program that reaches thousands of students worldwide is a benefit for any company. That’s because when these students leave academia for the commercial world, they will use the solutions that they were trained to use in college and will influence purchases at their new employers, which ultimately Seeds the future.
All of these elements spell SUCCESS for the university, for the company, and for industry. For instance, research done by faculty and students from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College in London has had significant impact in the commercial world. The ability to synthesize hardware from software-like descriptions inspired by the communicating sequential processes (CSP) formalism resulted in the Handel C description language, which was first commercialized by Celoxica.
Putting flexible multiplier circuitry on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), the ability to synthesize digital signal-processor (DSP) hardware descriptions directly from Simulink, and the use of FPGAs for video processing are a few more examples of work that has been done by Imperial College. There are many other ideas are in the pipeline not only at Imperial College but also at other universities throughout the world that most likely will migrate to commercial applications in the future.
Funding cycles, research grants, and curriculum updates can create unusual challenges. Industry can help overcome these challenges and be an integral part of making research come to fruition at many universities. Whether it is from product donations, research assistance, or student sponsorships, universities need and appreciate any help that industry can provide.
Recently, students and professors have been asking for more information about EVE. The fact that academics are becoming aware of EVE is because EVE’s solutions are now available to universities worldwide as a part of a new program that is reaching out to academia. Through EVE’s unEVErsity Connections Program, universities will find a program that offers a wide range of EVE’s ZeBu hardware platforms bundled together with customized software packages providing a complete hardware/software co-verification environment. Visit http://university.eve-team.com or email [email protected] to learn more about EVE’s unEVErsity Connections Program.