Programme objectives

For more than 30 years, integrated electronics has been the major new technological force shaping our everyday lives. Today's trend is that of shifting from personal computers to personal communication and computing, where system knowledge and expertise is now being encapsulated into single-chip solutions incorporating both hardware and software. This revolution is enabled and fuelled by deep submicron CMOS technologies, enabling gigascale integration.

A balanced Master's Programme is offered that includes all the key areas of knowledge and skills required to command the System-on-Chip technology, namely hardware design, embedded software design, analog circuit and radio design, systems engineering and extensive practical project work.

The programme is intended for senior undergraduate and first-year graduate students in electrical engineering and computer science. Key aspects are design methods, architectures and circuit design towards system level integration. The driving forces shaping the content and structure of the programme are:

Internationalisation: The atmosphere on the programme is truly international, with a mix of faculty, course assistants and students from all over the world.

Interdisciplinary approach: Our course mix gives a profound understanding of System-on-Chip design, ranging from deep sub micron and noise issues to formal techniques and system modelling.

Practical competence:Small project assignments and hands-on lab sessions are included in the courses. The knowledge acquired in the courses will be transformed into practical competence in the master's thesis work.

Upon successful completion of the program the students shall

-  Understand all important components of a System-on-Chip and an embedded system, i.e. digital hardware, analog hardware and embedded software;

-  Know the major design flows for digital hardware, analog hardware and embedded software;

-  Understand the major architectures and trade-offs concerning performance, cost and power consumption of single chip and embedded systems;

-     Has mastered important examples of design languages, tools and techniques in two of these three domains;

-     Appreciates the differences and commonalities of these three domains.

Upon successful completion of the program the students will be able to

-  Design digital hardware;

-  Design either embedded software or analog hardware;

-  Use important examples of standard design languages and tools;

-     Communicate design objectives, plans and results by means of reports and presentations to other SoC and embedded system engineers.

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Upon successful completion the students will be able

• to critically read technical reports and design documents;
• to assess their strong and weak points;
• to formulate their assessment in concrete and constructive terms.