Digital Systems: From Logic Gates to

Processors
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Course Organization

COURSE ORGANIZATION
Welcome to the course "Digital Systems: From Logic Gates to Processors". The UAB staff
appreciates your interest and hopes you enjoy it.

We do not know a priori (and maybe even you do not know either) what your degree of involvement
in the course will be. You might just want to watch the videos to get an idea of how digital circuits are
designed, maybe you only want to download the course material just in case you have time later on
to study it, or maybe you want to "go all out”: watch videos, understand the subject, pass the quizzes
and even go beyond the topics of this course by taking part in the forums and appealing to the
solidarity of the rest of learners and the teaching staff. Whatever your interest may be, you are very
welcome.

If you want to participate actively in the course you should install a virtual machine (VM) on your
computer. Such a virtual machine contains a set of tools that will help you to design circuits, will
allow the automatic correction of the exercises and will give you hints about how to improve your
designs. The installation of the VM is very well documented in the "Virtual Machine" section of this
module; follow the instructions and, if you have any problems, visit the forums especially dealing with
the VM installation.

The course rests on two kind of learning activities: Lectures (supplied as videos) and exercises.

The lectures
Each week contains a series of videos, some of them dealing with the course lessons (videos that
begin with letter "L"), and one or two videos dealing with the design of a very simple processor
(videos that begin with the letter "P"). You can take and successfully pass the course using only
the L_videos. The processor is just one example of the application of the topics studied in the
lectures; it is certainly an interesting example, but you may think of it just as "supplementary
material". No exercises about the processor have been included in the "graded quizzes", so if you do
not have time enough to devote to the course you can leave until later the topic of the processor.

The week begins with a block named "Index and PDF files" containing:

 Table of contents: A pdf file explaining the objectives of the topic under
study and a table of contents for every video (topic and minute).

 PDF files: Two files with the material that we used as the basis for the
L_videos and the P_videos. It might help you to take notes from lectures.

The quizzes (exercises)

At the end of each week you will find a wide set of exercises and quizzes: The "graded quiz", the
"practice quiz" and the solved exercises.

• Graded quiz: To successfully pass the course you should have submitted and passed all the
graded quizzes.

• Practice quizzes contain exercises to consolidate your knowledge about the topics explained in
the lectures before submitting the graded quizzes. They do not carry any weight in the final grade,
and offer you some clues when you submit an incorrect answer.In other words, they are not
mandatory but we highly recommend that you do them.

• Solved exercises are a set of exercises containing the whole process of the solution.

Both graded and practice quizzes can be submitted as many times as you want: Your final grade will
be the highest rating obtained in all the attempts. Remember, however, that after 3 attempts you
should wait at least 8 hours before taking the quiz again.

ALL RIGHT! AND NOW ,... WHERE SHOULD I START?

Right now
1. Read the section "General Information"

2. Read the "Virtual Machine" section and follow the instructions in the due
manual to install the VM on your computer
 3. Check your knowledge about numbering systems and pseudocode (practical
quizzes 0.1 and 0.2), and watch videos L_0 if you need to refresh your
knowledge of these topics.

During the rest of the course

1. Watch the videos of the week. If you watch the videos on-line you will see
some questions that, sometimes, interrupt the viewing. The aim of these
questions is to draw your attention to some concept to get a better
understanding of it. The answers to these questions do not carry any weight
in the final grade.

2. Complete and submit the quizzes. The natural order is first to read the solved
exercises, then complete the practice quiz, and finally solve and submit the
graded quiz.

3. Take a look at the forums. You will find that some colleague probably had
the same questions as you, and that some other colleagues or members of
the staff assisted them. So, take advantage of it!. And, if you can, try to lend
a hand to other participants ... but always remember and comply with
the code of honor, and never, never, give the complete solution of any
excersice of the graded quizzes.

Complete
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Syllabus and bibliography

SYLLABUS
1. DIGITAL SYSTEMS

 Digital systems. Digital electronic systems.

 Processor: Specifications and examples.

2. COMBINATIONAL SYSTEMS (I)

 Combinational systems. Boolean algebra. NAND, NOR, XOR, NXOR and TRI-
STATE logic gates.
  Processor: Functional and structural (I) specifications.

3. COMBINATIONAL SYSTEMS (II)

 Tools for the synthesis of combinational systems. Propagation time. Other

logic blocks. Programming language structures.

 Processor: Structural specification (II).

4. ARITHMETIC COMPONENTS + AN INTRODUCTION TO VHDL

 Arithmetic blocks.

 Introduction to VHDL

5. SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS (I)

 Sequential circuits. Explicit functional description. Latches and flip-flops.

Synthesis from tables. Examples.

 Processor: Combinational and sequential (I) blocks.

6. SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS (II)

 Registers and shift registers. Counters. Memories. Sequential

implementation of algorithms.

 Processor: Sequential blocks (II).

7. FINITE STATE MACHINES

 Finite state machines (FSM). VHDL description of FSM. Examples.

 Processor: Sequential blocks (III). Instructions and control. The complete

circuit.

8. IMPLEMENTATION OF DIGITAL SYSTEMS

 Physical implementation. Implementation strategies. Synthesis tools.

 Processor: Test. Other design methods.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
All the material of this Online Course, along with additional topics, are included in the following
textbook:
  Digital Systems: From Logic Gates to Processors. Deschamps JP,
Valderrama E, Terés L. Springer 2017. ISBN 978-3-319-41198-
9. http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319411972#aboutBook

Additional topics and a lot of examples are included in the following book (NEW):

 Complex Digital Circuits. Deschamps JP, Valderrama E, Terés L. Springer

2019 (available now). ISBN 978-3-030-12653-
7. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030126520

Furthermore, if you want to go deeper into the subject matter, here are some good books to look at:

 Digital Fundamentals. Thomas L Floyd. Prentice Hall 2005, ISBN: 0131946099

 Digital System Design using VHDL (2nd edition) Charles H. Roth, Jr., Lizy
Kurian John, Thomson, International Student Edition, 2008, ISBN 10: 0-495-
24470-8, ISBN 13: 978-0-495-24470-7)

 Synthesis of Arithmetic Circuits: FPGAs, ASICs and Embedded Systems.

Deschamps, J. P., Bioul, G. A., Sutter, G. D., John Wiley and Sons, ISBN: 0-
471-68783-9, 2006

Complete
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