Digital Electronics Education and Design Suite

Preliminary Report (May 2001)

Giuliano Donzellini, Domenico Ponta

University of Genoa
 • Deeds is the acronym of
Digital Electronics
Education and Design
Suite…
but, as ”deeds” mean, we
are not sure if they will be
good or bad…
Just like The Deeds of
Gallant Knights that
the splash form recalls...
“The Deeds of Gallant Knights”
This image from a picture of G. David, XVI Century
Paris, Musèe de l'Armèe

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 What is Deeds?
• Deeds is a set of educational tools for
Digital Electronics, characterised by a
“learn-by-doing” approach.
• Deeds covers the following areas:
- combinational and sequential logic
- finite state machine
- microcomputers

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What Deeds includes? (1)

• Assistant Browser, to navigate among

lessons, exercises and laboratory
assignements
• A Digital Circuit schematic Editor
• An interactive Circuit Animator
• An interactive Logic Simulator

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What Deeds includes? (2)

• A Finite State Machine designer

• A Microcomputer Board Emulator
• A microcomputer Assembler
• An Interactive Debugger
• A User Management data-base tool

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Interaction among the tools
• The Assistant Browser can launch all the
other tools
• It interacts with editors and simulators,
providing a true interaction between text
and experiments
• Simulators interact with each other

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The integrated simulation
• The schematic editor allows to merge
standard logic circuits with one or more
Finite State Machines and an Emulated
Microcomputer Board
• It is possible to experiment with digital
systems controlled by state machines and
microcomputers, port interfacing and low-
level programming of embedded systems
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Deeds as Learning Environment

• A collection of tools and text material that

help students acquiring:
– Theoretical foundations of the subject
– Analysis capabilities
– Ability to solve problems
– Practical synthesis and design skills

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Deeds as a common resource
• Deeds is a set of tools that teachers can
complete with their own materials to suit
their pedagogical needs
• There is no need for a specific authoring
tool, because the “lecture space” can be
composed with any HTML editor

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Deeds to teach theory

• A lecture based on Deeds appears as

HTML pages with text and figures
• It looks like a normal document, but many
of the figures and visual objects are
”Active", because they are connected to the
editing and simulation tools

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Deeds to solve exercises
• Exercise assignments are presented as
HTML pages with text and figures
• The role of Deeds is:
– To check the correctness of solutions
obtained manually
– To provide graphical tools for editing the
web page containing their reports
– To deliver the reports through the network

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A new approach to exercises
• With the availability of simulators, students
may be tempted to skip manual analysis
• Deeds suggests a different approach to the
exercise structure
• Exercises can be targeted more to the real
understanding of the issues than to the
execution of repetitive tasks

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Deeds to learn to design
• The development of a digital design project
is the field where Deeds can fully be
exploited
• Deeds allows the simulation of today’s
systems, where standard digital components
can be controlled by state machines and/or
a microcomputer board

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Deeds for NBPL project work

• Students use Deeds to download the

assignment from a web page
• Project development phases are guided by
help and instructions supplied through the
Assistant Browser

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Deeds for practical design

• In the following, we provide a glimpse on

how Deeds tools can be used for a project,
combining different techniques of digital
design

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Deeds - The Assistant Browser
• The Assistant Browser
is opened, showing a
page with a project
assignment
• All objects in the page
can be Active. By
clicking on the
schematics, the circuit
will be loaded in the
Digital Circuit
Simulator, ready to be
tested

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 Deeds - The Digital Circuit Simulator
• The basic operations
of professional tools
have been adapted to
the educational needs
• The components
available on the bin
are simple to
understand
• We avoided complex
real components, that
could confuse the
beginner

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Deeds - The Timing Simulator
• Timing simulation
can be executed in
a functional mode
(with no time
delays) or in true-
time mode
• Simulation can be
interactive, with a
step-by-step
approach, or can
be launched
defining a time
interval, as in
professional tools

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Deeds - The FSM Editor
• Finite State Machines
(FSM) can be designed in
various languages (HDL,
State transition table,
ASM chart), and using
specific graphical editors
• Finite State Machines can
be tested before synthesis
• Finite State Machines can
be stored as components
and inserted in the digital
schematic editor

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Deeds - The µC Board Emulator (1)
• The Microcomputer
Board Emulator
includes an 8-bit
microprocessor, a
RAM and ROM
memory system and
a simplified parallel
I/O ports
• The 8-bit micro-
processor is a
revised and
simplified version of
the well-known
Z80-CPU

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Deeds - The µC Board Emulator (2)
• The Microcomputer
Board Emulator
allows to edit
assembly code with
syntax highlighting
• Assembly code can
be partitioned in
multi-file projects
• The two-pass
assembler is
transparent to the
user

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Deeds - The µC Board Emulator (3)
• The Microcomputer
Board Emulator
allows to debug the
assembly code at
memory and register
level with an
interactive visual
debugger
• The debugger allows
a full control of the
microcomputer
operations, including
I/O operations

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