Course Description

This course offers an introduction to the engineering of digital systems. Starting with MOS transistors, the course develops a series of building blocks - logic gates, combinational and sequential circuits, finite-state machines, computers and finally complete systems. Both hardware and software mechanisms are explored through a series of design examples.

This course is required material for any undergraduate who wants to understand (and ultimately design) digital systems. A good grasp of the material is essential for later courses in digital design, computer architecture and systems. Before taking this course, students should feel comfortable using computers; a rudimentary knowledge of programming language concepts and electrical fundamentals is assumed.

Learning Objectives

On completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Understand the role of abstraction in the design of large digital systems, and explain the major software and hardware abstractions in contemporary computer systems.
• Analyze the performance of digital systems using measures such as latency and throughput.
• Design simple hardware systems based on a variety of digital abstractions such as ROMs and logic arrays, logic trees, state machines, pipelining, and buses.
• Synthesize digital systems from a library of representative components and test the designs under simulation.
• Understand the operation of a moderately complex digital system - a simple RISC-based computer - down to the gate level, and be able to synthesize, implement, and debug its components.
• Appreciate the technical skills necessary to be a capable digital systems engineer.

Measurable Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Identify flaws and limitations in simple systems implemented using the static discipline (noise assumptions, etc).
• Identify flaws and limitations in simple systems implemented using clocked registers with asynchronous inputs (metastability issues).
• Identify flaws and limitations in simple systems implemented using pipelined processors (pipeline hazards).
• Identify flaws and limitations in simple systems implemented using semaphores for process synchronization (deadlocks).
• Identify flaws and limitations in simple systems implemented using shared-memory multiprocessors (sequential inconsistency).
• Characterize the logic function of combinational devices using CMOS, ROM, or PLA technologies.
• Explain synthesis issues for combinational devices using CMOS, ROM, or PLA technologies from their functional specification.
• Explain synthesis of acyclic circuits from combinational components.
• Calculate performance characteristics of acyclic circuits with combinational components.
• Explain and calculate performance characteristics of single-clock sequential circuits.
• Design, debug, and test combinational circuits of the complexity of an arithmetic logic unit.
• Design, debug, and test a controller for a finite-state machine.
• Pipeline a combinational circuit for improved throughput.
• Understand issues affecting microprocessor instruction set design.
• Complete and debug the design of a simple CPU with a given RISC-based intruction set.
• Measure the memory access performance of a processor, and tune cache design parameters to improve performance.
• Analyze the operation of page-based virtual memory systems.
• Translate simple programs from C to machine language.
• Deduce processor state from a memory snapshot during execution.