Digital System Design
ECE451 / ECE450 · Colorado State University
Fall 2026 | Fort Collins, CO
Why I took it
I was a learning assistant for ECE102. This is the course that turns that digital-logic background into a full design flow: describe the hardware in Verilog, map it to gates, and load it onto an FPGA in the ECE450 lab. The MSEE is embedded systems; I wanted a semester where the datapath and the control logic are something I built, not something I only talk to from firmware.
What I'm learning
Verilog and the design flow
Behavioral HDL for combinational and sequential systems, then the rest of the path: gate-level mapping, simulation, and verification on an FPGA — software description down to a chip you can debug.
Combinational and sequential machines
Combinational logic, then state-machine design and optimization, and the sequential circuits that show up once you leave a single truth table.
Datapath, control, and PLDs
Arithmetic logic, datapath and control, and implementing combinational logic on programmable devices — the split between the path that moves data and the logic that steers it.