Lesson 225
Hardware Design
HDL & Accelerators
1:00How engineers describe and specialize hardware — from Verilog circuits and clock timing to FPGAs, ASICs, GPUs, and the TPU systolic array.
By the end, you can
- Explain why HDL code describes parallel hardware rather than sequential instructions.
- Distinguish combinational from sequential logic and identify the correct Verilog sensitivity list and assignment operator for each.
- Describe what the critical path is and explain how it limits clock frequency.
- Explain what pipelining improves (throughput) and what it does not change (latency).
- Define FPGA, ASIC, GPU, and TPU and state the defining advantage and tradeoff of each.
- Describe the data flow in a systolic array and explain why it reduces memory bandwidth pressure.
- Apply the flexibility-vs-efficiency spectrum to choose the right hardware target for a given volume and workload stability.
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