Spring 2027

Design Automation of Digital Systems

Design Automation of Digital Systems covers using digital computers to simulate, partition, place, and interconnect digital electronic systems.

offering recorded3 credits
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 Azadeh Davoodi3.9/5

Summary

1 / 6

Past student reviews · Azadeh Davoodi

Azadeh Davoodi's project required effort to do well.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Identify different steps of the design flow of integrated circuits

  • Map a high-level netlist in Verilog to a gate-level logic circuit using a standard-cell library

  • Identify different steps of layout design including placement, global, and detailed routing

  • Perform static timing analysis in a combinational logic circuit

  • Identify and apply physical-synthesis techniques in integrated circuits such as gate sizing and logic restructuring

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

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

Prerequisites

Course map

E C E/​COMP SCI 352 and COMP SCI 300, graduate/professional standing, or member of Engineering Guest Students

ECE 556

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

Prerequisite text tree

Professors

Spring 2027
Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 4.42/5 from 12 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.

For this course: 5.0/5 raw quality · 2.5/5 difficulty · 2 reviews

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

Past student reviews · Azadeh Davoodi

Azadeh Davoodi explained material thoroughly and provided clear grading criteria for quizzes and exams. Students found her assessments fair and noted that a project required significant effort to perform well.

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2022: 3.22 GPA, 52.6% A/AB (n=38 letter grades); Spring 2023: 3.31 GPA, 61.9% A/AB (n=21 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.53 GPA, 73.3% A/AB (n=30 letter grades).

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

AZADEH DAVOODI is recorded teaching in Spring 2007, Spring 2008, Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Spring 2011, Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2026. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

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 / 480

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 · Azadeh Davoodi

Azadeh Davoodi explained the material thoroughly; her quizzes and exams were extremely fair, and grading was to the student's benefit.

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2023: 3.31 GPA, 61.9% A/AB (n=21 letter grades); Spring 2024: 4.00 GPA, 100.0% A/AB (n=32 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.53 GPA, 73.3% A/AB (n=30 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Azadeh Davoodi

Azadeh Davoodi's project required effort to do well.

Past student reviews · Azadeh Davoodi

Azadeh Davoodi was clear with grading criteria and what would be on quizzes and tests.

Topics

  • Simulation, partitioning, placement, and interconnection of digital electronic systems.
  • Integrated circuit design flow.
  • Mapping Verilog netlists to gate-level logic circuits.
  • Layout design, placement, and routing.
  • Static timing analysis.
  • Physical synthesis techniques.

Skills

  • Identify steps of the integrated circuit design flow.
  • Map Verilog netlists to gate-level logic circuits using standard-cell libraries.
  • Identify layout design steps including placement and routing.
  • Perform static timing analysis in combinational logic circuits.
  • Apply physical-synthesis techniques like gate sizing and logic restructuring.

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 556 · Spring 2027

Design Automation of Digital Systems

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": "1274:320:006436",
    "course_id": "ECE 556",
    "course_uid": "course_4352b7eea7990574af634d57",
    "term_id": "1274",
    "source_course_id": "006436",
    "source_subject_id": "320",
    "title": "Design Automation of Digital Systems",
    "credits_min": 3,
    "credits_max": 3,
    "typically_offered": "Fall"
  }
]
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": "e9aaf4052db92ef724d6a7b1b20b8c286987f751472cc90baf9ddec4d6b25444",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}