Designing a UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter) in RTL (Register-Transfer Level) is not straightforward. Don't miss the UART concepts, design and verification workshop on 5th and 6th Nov, use the link to book your seat - https://lnkd.in/gVpirNhG Here are the key steps and components involved in RTL design of a UART: Specification: Begin by understanding the requirements and specifications of the UART you want to design. This includes the data rate, data frame format, parity, stop bits, and any other relevant features. State Machine Design: UART communication is based on a state machine. Design the states that your UART will go through, including Idle, Start bit, Data bits, Parity bit (if used), and Stop bits. You'll need to design a state machine controller to manage the transitions between these states. Baud Rate Generator: The UART baud rate is crucial. Design a baud rate generator to create the clock frequency that matches the desired data rate. Transmitter (TX) and Receiver (RX) Modules: Transmitter (TX): Serialize parallel data into a serial stream. Add start, data, parity, and stop bits as per the specification. Implement a transmit FIFO buffer to store outgoing data. Manage flow control (if required). Receiver (RX): Synchronize the incoming serial stream with the system clock. Implement a receive FIFO buffer to store incoming data. Detect the start bit, data bits, parity bit (if used), and stop bits. Verify data integrity and report any errors. Manage flow control (if required). Error Handling: Implement error detection and correction mechanisms. Common UART errors include framing errors, parity errors, and overrun errors. Testing and Simulation: Create comprehensive testbenches to verify the functionality of your UART design. Test for various scenarios, error conditions, and edge cases. Additionally, consider industry standards and application requirements when designing your UART to ensure compatibility with other devices and systems.

IMHO, UART is one of the most straightforward and mostly utilized modules in digital design. I give implementing UART module as a learning project for students and/or interns. You can find tons of UART transciever implementation examples in github or other open-source platforms. You can even find more complex implementation related to UART such as UART with DMA in open source platforms, one example is core-v-mcu project from openhw group: https://github.com/openhwgroup/core-v-mcu/tree/master/rtl/udma/udma_uart There are books you can find details of the UART implementation, one example is Pong Chu's FPGA Prototyping by VHDL/Verilog Examples. I am not saying UART is very easy to comprehend with full scale or you don't want to be careful when designing, testing or using UART. But I am a bit shocked and confused to see a workshop with two days only for UART implementation. One can learn UART from open-source implementations and tons of free reading material. Anyway, good luck for your workshop.