DSP LiB aims to boost practical skills of students

As the centerpiece of the ARM University Program, LiB packages offer ARM-based technology and high quality teaching and training materials that support electronics and computer engineering courses. DSP courses have traditionally used software simulation packages, or hands-on labs using relatively expensive development kits costing around $300 per student. By comparison, this new DSP LiB being unveiled at the ASEE Annual Conference (June 17 2014) and will cost around $50. The DSP LiB will allow students to practice theory with advanced hardware sourced from widely-available products.

“Our Lab-in-a-Box offerings are proving hugely popular in universities because of the low-cost access to state-of-the-art technology,” said Khaled Benkrid, manager of the Worldwide University Program, ARM. “The DSP kits, powered by ARM Cortex-M4-based processors, enable high performance yet energy-efficient digital signal processing at a very affordable price. We expect to see them being used by students to create commercially-viable audio applications and it’s another great example of our partnership supporting engineers in training and beyond.”

The DSP LiB will begin shipping to universities in July 2014. It is the latest in a series of initiatives led by ARM which span multiple academic topics including embedded systems design, programming and SoC design. The DSP kits will also be offered to developers outside academia at a later date.

A typical DSP Lab-in-a-Box contains:

•    Hardware boards (ARM Cortex-M4-based STM32F4 Discovery microcontroller boards from STMicroelectronics and Wolfson Audio Cards from Wolfson Microelectronics and Farnell element14)
•    One-year renewable software licences for the full ARM Keil MDK-Professional development tool from ARM
•    Complete teaching materials, including lecture note slides, demonstration codes and hands-on lab manuals with solutions in source.

“Low-cost Cortex-M4-based microcontroller development kits, combined with suitable audio interfaces, represent an exciting new opportunity to spread hands-on DSP teaching to a wider audience,” said Dr. Donald Reay, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. “These hardware and software tools are similar to those used for teaching and development of microcontroller applications and afford an ideal introduction to real-time and DSP concepts with wide applicability to embedded systems”

Laurent Desseignes, from ARM partner STMicroelectronics, commented: “Leveraging the STM32F4 MCU that is among the highest performance Cortex-M microcontrollers in the market, the Discovery board in the Lab-in-a-box is the ideal tool for teaching - and doing - audio-system development. Students will learn important control and signal-processing design skills that will serve them well throughout their careers.”