Neebel, D. J., & Burek, N. J., & Griebel, T. (2012, June), FPGArcade: Motivating the Study of Digital Hardware  Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--21405

\bibitem{asee_peer_21405}
  Neebel, D. J., \& Burek, N. J., \& Griebel, T. (2012, June), \emph{FPGArcade: Motivating the Study of Digital Hardware}
  Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, San Antonio, Texas.
  10.18260/1-2--21405

Danial J. Neebel, Nicholas J. Burek, and Thomas Griebel.  "FPGArcade: Motivating the Study of Digital Hardware".  2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas, 2012, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2012.  https://peer.asee.org/21405 Internet.  23 Feb, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_21405}
  Danial J. Neebel, Nicholas J. Burek, and Thomas Griebel.
  "FPGArcade: Motivating the Study of Digital Hardware".
  \emph{2012 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, San Antonio, Texas, 2012, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2012.
  https://peer.asee.org/21405 Internet.  23 Feb, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_21405
author = "Danial J. Neebel, Nicholas J. Burek, and Thomas Griebel"
title = "FPGArcade: Motivating the Study of Digital Hardware"
booktitle = "2012 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2012"
month = "June"
address = "San Antonio, Texas"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/21405}
number = {10.18260/1-2--21405}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -                                          FPGArcade:                       Motivating the Study of Digital HardwareDeclining enrollments in engineering fields have led educators to look for new ways to motivatestudents. Video and computer games are often used to get students to spend time on subjectssuch as math and science that may not otherwise spark a young person’s interest. Organizationssuch as DigiPen are developing projects to motivate middle and high school students to learnmore about game development and 3D animation. Using game development as an educationmedium can prove difficult in early courses since game development requires knowledge of avariety of advanced topics such as digital design, I/O interfaces, real-time systems, graphics, andin some cases artificial intelligence. Tools that make game development easy for students tendto provide interfaces that abstract away many low-level details. The high level of abstractionimplies that they are not as effective at helping students learn the underlying principles.This paper presents the FPGArcade system that makes game development simple while stillproviding insightful details into low level concepts. Fledgling programmers can test the waters ofthe hardware/software interface without having to go through several courses in digital logic,computer architecture, and electric circuits. Using an inexpensive FPGA-based platform andfree software from the Xilinx Corporation a programmer with some basic knowledge of C orC++ programming is able to create a simple computer game.The FPGArcade is inspired by older gaming consoles. The model for the FPGAracade system isbased upon the Nintendo Entertainment System’s Picture Processing Unit (PPU). The PPU usedtiles to take advantage of graphical redundancy thus reducing memory needed. The FPGArcadeuses a tile-based design and defines a set of instruction codes used to interact with the videomemory. These instruction codes are available as memory-mapped I/O. Programmers can accessthe instructions directly or call easy to use wrapper functions which can set the pixels andlocation of individual tiles. Tiles can also be set to fixed or movable, transparent or opaque, andsolid or not. The system is intuitive and allows for a quick visual way to interact with hardwarefrom high-level C code. The FPGArcade system also provides a joystick interface as part of theC library to provide ease of use for the student developer. The modular design of the systemallows for the development of additional interface devices. These features create a fun,interactive, and educational system that can be used to encourage students in engineering andcomputer science to further their understanding of hardware.
AU  - Danial J. Neebel
AU  - Nicholas J. Burek
AU  - Thomas Griebel
CY  - San Antonio, Texas
DA  - 2012/06/10
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - FPGArcade: Motivating the Study of Digital Hardware
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/21405
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--21405
ER  -