The study of electrical engineering did not include a course on logic design when I attended Purdue in the late 1960’s. We had computers then, but we had only a few integrated circuits, so digital devices were very expensive. Many advances have been made since then, so that now we have very powerful and inexpensive digital devices all on a single chip of silicon. So much so, that almost all modern devices are mostly if not completely, digital. Because of these big changes, we now have a course on digital design, and it is one of the key building blocks of knowledge for electrical and computer engineers.
I don’t think it is possible to get you to really grasp how seismic this change is. But, I am going to try with a few thought exercises. First, if you cut yourself, you will likely bleed. You will see that your blood looks red. This is because of the hemoglobin in the red cells that make up 40% to 50% of your blood. You need a pretty good microscope to see one of these red cells because they are from 6 to 8 um in size. Currently Intel, AMD, Xilinx, NVidia and other cutting edge chip makers are using 10 nm features. This means, that we could put 7,000 features across a red blood cell’s diameter, and almost 400,000 features on the surface area of one red cell. Now, in 1981 when I did my PhD thesis, I use one of the most common microprocessors of the day, the 6502. It contained about 4,000 transistors. So, today using the modern feature size, you could put 100 of these microprocessors on a single red cell! This is so great a change that I just can’t really comprehend it emotionally.
Secondly, the latest NVidia chip, the Ampere A100, has 54 billion transistors. If we allotted one square inch on the schematic for each transistor, the schematic would require a piece of paper 13.5 square miles or 1/4th of Washington DC’s area.
Thirdly, if you have 54 billion transistors to hook up, how many different ways can you do this? This number is functional infinity, implying at some level, that you can make almost anything with this many transistors. (When I type in 54 billion and hit the factorial key, my calculator says: “OVERFLOW”)
This is the real world where you are going to go to work to design and make new digital devices that will truly, only be limited by your imagination and not by the technology. This has only been fantasy until now. This text will begin your final stages of preparation.
Dr. Morton has taught logic design at UTSA for 20 years, longer than some of you have been alive. He got his BS EE from Purdue in 1970 and his MS EE, PhD EE and MD from Mizzou finishing in 1981. He flew helicopters in Viet Nam for the Army and spent 21 years in the Air Force as a physician and scientist. He now teaches at UTSA full time as a non-tenured track professor in practice. He lives with his wife, Phyllis of 45 years and has 3 daughters and 8.5 grandchildren. He mentors married medical and dental students and is a small group leader for Bible Study Fellowship and in a marriage ministry.
Chapter 1 Why the World of Electronics Has Moved from Analog to Digital Design
Chapter 2 Number Systems
Chapter 3 The Current Binary Template
Chapter 4 The Basic Theorems of “Switching Algebra”
Chapter 5 How We Can Turn a Truth Table Into a Circuit
Chapter 6 How We Can Use a K-Map to Simplify a Logic Expression
Chapter 7 The Basics of Combinational Design
Chapter 8 Standard Combinational Devices Frequently Used In Design
Chapter 9 Using Hardware Description Languages and Computer Languages to Describe Combinational Logic
Chapter 10 Devices That Have Two Stable States: Latches and Flip Flops
Chapter 11 Sequential Design: Sequential and Non-Sequential Counters
Chapter 12 Sequential Design: Basic Sequential Designs with Inputs and Outputs
Chapter 13 Sequential Design: State Table Reduction
Chapter 14 Sequential Design: Flip Flop State Assignment
Chapter 15 State Machine Charts
Chapter 16 Sequential Design with HDLs
Chapter 17 How to Develop Algorithms in Sequential Design
Chapter 18 Logic Design in Practice—Putting It All Together
Appendix A Logic Design Projects – Combinational Designs