Welcome to Digital Circuit Design!

Digital Circuit Design is the fundamental course in computer engineering. Digital electronics and computers surround us. This course will provide the fundamental background needed to understand how these systems work and how to design digital circuits. We begin by covering the mathematical concepts necessary in the study of digital systems. We will then move onto electronic gates and how digital logic works. We will design and analyze combinatonial circuits, and show how to construct the minimal (least number of gates) circuit necessary to implement a specific function. We will then move on to sequential circuits which add a concept of memory or feedback to the combinatorial design. We will analyze and design these circuits. Finally, we will look at common electronic components (such as counters and shift registers) and then look into programmable logic devices.

This course will stress fundamentals. It is imperative that the concepts covering in this class are well understood if any further study in computer engineering is to be undertaken. We will pay particular attention to design principles and techniques, timing analysis, and finite state machines.

The material covered in this course is not hard, but it does require significant amounts of effort, especially if it is your first exposure to these topics and to design in general (and it will be for most students!). Be prepared to work hard...and come out of this course with a good knowledge of the fundamentals of computer engineering and digital systems.

Course Goals and Objectives:

Goal: The goal of this course is for the students to develop the ability to analyze an existing digital circuit or to synthesize a new digital design to meet stated specifications.

Objectives: Students will be able to

• Work with a variety of number systems and numeric representations, including signed and unsigned binary, hexadecimal, 2’s complement.

• Design and analysis of digital logic circuits.

• Apply fundamental analysis skills to correctly describe the behavior of a given digital logic circuit.