Prof Kobayashi told us that they teach VHDL to third year students in a lab containing 30 machines equipped with FPGA boards. He mentioned that while in the USA the use of FPGAs is now well established for university teaching, in Japan it is "still on the increase". Students are introduced to VHDL in the second year, although at that stage they only need to produce a written report. In the third year they study the topic in more depth and must engage in and submit practical work. One of the examples they focus on is the "Triple DES" encryption algorithm [http://www.tropsoft.com/strongenc/des3.htm]. Prof Kobayashi said that they partly use the free "Alliance" EDA software [http://www-asim.lip6.fr/alliance/].
After our meeting we were taken on a brief tour of some of their facilities. We were shown a lab containing fifteen workstations equipped with FPGA boards donated by Altera. The FPGA boards incorporated 7-segment LED displays. The students mostly have to work in pairs; there are around 90 students altogether in one cohort, split into four groups.
After that we were taken to another building containing a very impressive array of chip fabrication equipment within a clean room that was clearly viewable through large windows. There were diagrams on display to explain some of the equipment, and also the clean room air flow system – air flowed from vents in the ceiling down through the mesh flooring, and was re-cycled via filters. Upstairs in the same building we were taken to see the facilities in one of the research labs. Mr Tanaka showed us an impressive board that he had designed containing both a DSP chip and an FPGA chip. They have implemented a number of these boards and use them as vehicles for teaching visual image processing to third year students.