The difficulty is FPGA engineering is a complex discipline and not one widely acknowledged by school curriculums within the UK. Senior FPGA Consultant at L3Harris in Tewkesbury, Philip Abbey, was recently inspired to try and lower the barrier to entry for young people to get hands-on with FPGA skills and career paths.
Developing an Accessible Introduction to FPGA
In most primary schools in the UK, software concepts are currently introduced to younger students using Scratch visual programming and solvable puzzles. This idea became the catalyst for Abbey to develop a Scratch toolkit designed to help educate local comprehensive students, aged between 16 and 18, about FPGA. The toolkit uses a visual programming method to output VHDL, a hardware description language that models the behaviour and structure of digital systems. By combining the theory of digital logic design with practical aspects using interactive tools, this approach would ultimately lower a main barrier to FPGA entry.
With four buttons and LEDs to play with on the available FPGA development boards, exercises from basic logic gates through finite state machines were applied to make exercises as engaging and immersive as possible. Co-authored alongside his 14-year-old son, the technical solutions to these exercises were then made into an open source project, with all ideas and concepts developed during personal time out of work with the goal of creating a compelling opportunity to educate young people about a critical aspect of engineering.
Bringing the Idea to Life
The L3Harris critical talent social value pillar at Tewkesbury and Fleet provided the perfect banner under which to deliver the teaching to schools in the local area. Through this and the invaluable support of the business’ IT and leadership teams, schools were provided with all of the technology necessary to begin scheduling toolkit learning sessions.
So far, Year 12 students within two local schools, Ribston Hall High School and Pate's Grammar School, have trialled the toolkit. Ribston’s group consisted of six female students, proving a great opportunity to engage more young women in engineering skillsets. Pate’s saw a mixed group of 20 students introduced to the toolkit’s exercises across five hours of teaching time. Abbey was joined by colleagues Matt Ainsworth and Max Barstow from Tewkesbury to deliver the sessions to Pate’s.
Students seemed surprised it was possible to have a fun, technical job like FPGA development, with many even enquiring about routes into the field via university courses. One Ribston student said, "I absolutely loved the hands-on experience of coding the chip… Thanks for making learning this interactive, exciting and thrilling!"
A Great Step for STEM Outreach
Since the initial sessions, three more schools have now expressed an interest in exploring the ScratchVHDL toolkit further. Ribston Hall has even asked for a second set of classes in the next school year. “All pupils were motivated to try out new ideas in the face of the unfamiliar material the toolkit presented them with. This made the experience very rewarding on all sides,” said Abbey. “I think there is something novel about the idea of teaching pupils about silicon chip design in such a practical way.”
L3Harris is passionate about advocating for STEM skills and career opportunities and frequently engages with its local communities to continue to inspire the next generation. The ScratchVHDL toolkit sessions will continue into the second half of 2024 and beyond under Abbey’s leadership.
