Sponsored post: L3Harris facilitates bringing FPGA engineering skills to local UK schools

This vital field of engineering focuses on designing, developing and applying FPGAs with capabilities spanning across cybersecurity, autonomous vehicles and space systems, to name a few. Enabling the next generation of engineers to better understand and learn more about this skillset is essential, not only for the future of our business but of the wider world.

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.