CRAFT Overlay — D1+D2 — Hardware Thinking + Data Types, Vectors & Operators¶
Date: Mon 5/25 · Merged session (combined lab finished during the Tue 5/26 catch-up block)
Why merged
Day 1 is realistically all toolchain setup and the first board upload — it leaves no room for a real lab. Merging it with Day 2 makes Monday a setup-and-vocabulary session; the combined combinational/data-type lab is finished during the Tuesday catch-up block.
🌍 Contextualize¶
"You're learning HDL in a city built by Gaudí — an architect who thought in parallel structures and modular repetition. Hardware description is the same discipline: you describe things that exist simultaneously. And the data those circuits move — binary — is in everything around you: your phone, the metro ticket reader, the airport baggage scanner."
⚠️ Reframe¶
"If You're Thinking Like a Programmer: HDL is just another programming language and variables are storage boxes. Reframe: HDL describes physical hardware that runs in parallel. Every assign is a wire. Every always block is a circuit. A wire is a physical connection — it doesn't store anything; reg is a storage element, not a variable."
🔑 Key Insight¶
"In software, instructions execute one at a time. In hardware, everything happens at once — this is the single most important shift in thinking for this course. And the name reg is misleading: it doesn't mean register, it means 'the simulator needs to remember this value.' SystemVerilog fixes this with logic."
🤖 Check the Machine¶
(None — D1+D2 is pre-AI-thread. Introduce the concept: "Starting Day 4, we'll use AI as a verification tool.")
🔗 Transfer¶
"Tuesday is a catch-up block — finish your toolchain setup and the combined lab. Wednesday: combinational logic — making decisions in hardware with always @(*), if, and case, plus your first synthesis output."
Back to Barcelona Day Plan View D1 Slides View D2 Slides Baseline D1 Materials Baseline D2 Materials
This overlay supplements the baseline D1 and D2 daily plans, merged into one Barcelona session. All lab exercises and lecture content come from the baseline D1 and D2 materials.