Course Grading

Grade Computation

Your course grade will be based on your performance on your projects and your final project by the following percentages:

	Design Projects	Final Paper / Project
Percentage of Final Grade	70%	30%

This year, we are personally hoping that the need for any exams are not needed. That includes that all students work hard to learn the material, so that individual evaluations are not necessary. In the case that I find such measurement instruments necessary for this class, I reserve the right to add such exams to the course. From data collected in previous semesters, most (if not all) students would prefer no quizes or exams.

Grade Components

Design Projects

A key part of the Analog IC design, and in particular Neuromorphic Analog VLSI design, experience is the electrical measurements of integrated circuits. We do not want this class to degenerate into a theoretical discussion about circuit analysis. The projects center on experiments to be performed on custom VLSI chips that were built especially for this class. More detailed project information is on a separate web page.

Projects will be done in groups, typically groups of two. We will be finished with these design projects by the start of spring break, so everyone gets a break for the class.

These design projects are partially designed to get everyone in the class up to speed on key concepts as well as being able to use the resulting experiemental setup.

These projects will involve experimental data from FPAA boards, and are well developed exercises from previous year's projects as well as some new projects.

All of these projects are designed to gve the necessary data, circuit experience, and FPAA experience needed to be successful in the design projects. Therefore, to do well on the design projects, you need to complete this material.

Each of the projects starts with example blocks that are known to robustly work. Most of the remaining experimental projects involve modifying these starting diagrams for that week's project.

Experimental data should be processed in Scilab (MATLAB is acceptable for the final plots).

Final Project: The final project will either be a design project (done as a group, Information), or a final paper critically analyzing an area of physical computing / neurmorphic engineering ( Information )

And yes, there is no final exam for this course, and in fact, we have no scheduled meeting times during review days.