Spring 2027

Digital Engineering Laboratory

Digital Engineering Laboratory covers practical computer system design, including designing, constructing, testing, and programming pipelined digital computers and significant digital subsystems.

offering recorded4 credits
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 Setareh Behroozi3.8/5

Summary

1 / 6

Past student reviews · Parmesh Ramanathan

Students reported that answering simple yes/no questions took up to 30 minutes, contributing to a frustrating in-class experience.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Specify a novel instruction set architecture (ISA)

  • Specify the design of a processor that implements a novel ISA

  • Develop, verify, and demonstrate a working prototype of a processor

  • Collaborate effectively as a member of a moderate-sized team

  • Communicate project status and results effectively both orally and in writing

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
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All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

E C E 551 and E C E/​COMP SCI 552. Not open to special students or students with credit forE C E 453, 454 or 455.

    • take all
        • special students
        • students with credit forE C E 453, 454 or 455
        take one
      not eligible with
    take all
ECE 554

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
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    • All of
    • Not eligible with
      • Any of
        • special students
        • students with credit forE C E 453, 454 or 455

Professors

Spring 2027
Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 3.83/5 from 40 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

No course-specific feedback yet.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist
LEC 001Classroom Instruction0 / 200
LAB 301Classroom Instruction0 / 200

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections. Enrollment reflects scan time.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Parmesh Ramanathan

A former instructor relied on recycled slides and taught spontaneously, often failing to explain expectations clearly.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2024: 3.86 GPA, 90.9% A/AB (n=11 letter grades); Spring 2025: 3.61 GPA, 77.3% A/AB (n=22 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.86 GPA, 100.0% A/AB (n=38 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Parmesh Ramanathan

Students reported that answering simple yes/no questions took up to 30 minutes, contributing to a frustrating in-class experience.

Past student reviews · Parmesh Ramanathan

One student found the instructor's feedback on presentations to be very harsh and almost insulting.

Topics

  • Computer system design
  • Digital subsystems
  • Pipelined digital computers
  • Instruction set architecture (ISA)
  • Processor design

Skills

  • Designing, constructing, and programming pipelined digital computers
  • Designing, constructing, and testing digital subsystems
  • Specifying novel instruction set architectures
  • Specifying processor designs for novel ISAs
  • Developing, verifying, and demonstrating processor prototypes
  • Collaborating in moderate-sized teams
  • Communicating project status and results orally and in writing

Grades

Latest available · Spring 2026— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Spring 2026

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2026 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1280 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records
ECE 554 · Spring 2027

Digital Engineering Laboratory

Recorded 2026-10-14
Raw records 
[
  {
    "run_id": "20261014T203208-0851c9a1",
    "semester": "1274",
    "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00",
    "offering_id": "1274:320:006434",
    "course_id": "ECE 554",
    "course_uid": "course_63ab7842cc7890cc92517188",
    "term_id": "1274",
    "source_course_id": "006434",
    "source_subject_id": "320",
    "title": "Digital Engineering Laboratory",
    "credits_min": 4,
    "credits_max": 4,
    "typically_offered": "Fall, Spring"
  }
]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
Download part 1
Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Download part 1
Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "7fc0d88cd9b65cc9567a5c81c60cb010371ef7ed20c3c6744cd47863ebcbfbd1",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}