Master AI Hardware: From Digital Design Foundations to Custom Accelerator Implementation

Building on the courses in the 3-course Digital Circuit Design series, Advanced Digital Design provides a comprehensive pathway for developing expertise in AI hardware implementation and optimization. The three-course series begins with foundational concepts exploring the evolution and applications of AI/ML hardware accelerators while reinforcing essential digital design and machine learning principles, then advances to CPU and GPU platform optimization where students learn to fine-tune AI models for both traditional and parallel processing architectures. The series concludes with custom hardware platforms covering FPGA implementations, ASIC design pipelines, and neuromorphic computing, concluding with a capstone project that challenges students to implement complete AI/ML algorithms on custom hardware solutions.

Learning Format:

Online | 3 - 9 Months

Enjoy the flexibility of learning at your own pace while the course is open. Courses are 100 percent online, with no in-person meetings. You will have access to the course materials for about 3-weeks per course during the Summer quarter and about 10-weeks per course during the Fall, Winter, and Spring quarters.

What you will learn:

• History of AI and Evolution of AI Hardware
• AI Hardware applications to real-world problems
• Review and evaluation of Digital Design and Hardware Description Language (HDL) implementations
• Review and evaluation of Machine Learning Algorithm implementations
• Introduction to Central Processing Unit (CPU) architectures
• CPU architectures for AI
• AI model implementations on CPUs
• GPU architectures for AI
• AI model implementation and optimizations on GPUs
• Custom GPU programming constructs
• Introduction to Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs)
• ML algorithm implementations on custom hardware
• Introduction to Neuromorphic computing
• Capstone project for course and series to design, optimize and deploy a system-level (hardware and software) solution

Prerequisites

The Advanced Digital Design series is open to students who have already completed the three Futures: Digital Circuit Design classes.

How to Enroll:

Pay as You Go Per Course:

For general enrollments, expand the “courses” tab at the bottom of this page to review the course list and then click a course to see details and enroll. You may pay per course as you work through the program. Courses must be taken in sequence.

Scholarships:

No Futures scholarships are available for Fall 2025.