A multi-disciplinary approach for digital systems design curricula

Historically, Digital Systems Design curricula have focused principally on the hardware design aspects of systems development. At Arizona State University, we have expanded our Digital Systems Design program to include aspects of computer architecture, assembly language programming, and operating systems fundamentals, as well. We feel that this larger focus provides the students with a comprehensive understanding of the overall system development process. In this paper, we discuss our philosophy and examine a course sequence that incorporates this multi-disciplinary approach.