Logic & Computer Design Fundamentals (5th Edition)

Book Preface

The objective of this text is to serve as a cornerstone for the learning of logic design, digital system design, and computer design by a broad audience of readers. This fifth edition marks the continued evolution of the text contents. Beginning as an adaptation of a previous book by the first author in 1997, it continues to offer a unique combination of logic design and computer design principles with a strong hardware emphasis. Over the years, the text has followed industry trends by adding new material such as hardware description languages, removing or de-emphasizing material of declining importance, and revising material to track changes in computer technology and computer-aided design.

New to This Edition

The fifth edition reflects changes in technology and design practice that require computer system designers to work at higher levels of abstraction and manage larger ranges of complexity than they have in the past. The level of abstraction at which logic, digital systems, and computers are designed has moved well beyond the level at which these topics are typically taught. The goal in updating the text is to more effectively bridge the gap between existing pedagogy and practice in the design of computer systems, particularly at the logic level. At the same time, the new edition maintains an organization that should permit instructors to tailor the degree of technology coverage to suit both electrical and computer engineering and computer science audiences. The primary changes to this edition include:
• Chapter 1 has been updated to include a discussion of the layers of abstractions in computing systems and their role in digital design, as well as an overview of the digital design process. Chapter 1 also has new material on alphanumeric codes for internationalization.
• The textbook introduces hardware description languages (HDLs) earlier, starting in Chapter 2. HDL descriptions of circuits are presented alongside logic schematics and state diagrams throughout the chapters on combinational and sequential logic design to indicate the growing importance of HDLs in contemporary digital system design practice. The material on propagation delay, which is a first-order design constraint in digital systems, has been moved into Chapter 2.
• Chapter 3 combines the functional block material from the old Chapter 3 and the arithmetic blocks from the old Chapter 4 to present a set of commonly occurring combinational logic functional blocks. HDL models of the functional blocks are presented throughout the chapter. Chapter 3 introduces the concept of hierarchical design.
• Sequential circuits appear in Chapter 4, which includes both the description of design processes from the old Chapter 5, and the material on sequential circuit timing, synchronization of inputs, and metastability from the old Chapter 6. The description of JK and T flip-flops has been removed from the textbook and moved to the online Companion Website.
• Chapter 5 describes topics related to the implementation of digital hardware, including design of complementary metal-oxide (CMOS) gates and programmable logic. In addition to much of the material from the old Chapter 6, Chapter 5 now includes a brief discussion of the effect of testing and verification on the cost of a design. Since many courses employing this text have lab exercises based upon field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), the description of FPGAs has been expanded, using a simple, generic FPGA architecture to explain the basic programmable elements that appear in many commercially available FPGA families.
• The remaining chapters, which cover computer design, have been updated to reflect changes in the state-of-the art since the previous edition appeared. Notable changes include moving the material on high-impedance buffers from the old Chapter 2 to the bus transfer section of Chapter 6 and adding a discussion of how procedure call and return instructions can be used to implement function calls in high level languages in Chapter 9.

Offering integrated coverage of both digital and computer design, this edition of Logic and Computer Design Fundamentals features a strong emphasis on fundamentals underlying contemporary design. Understanding of the material is supported by clear explanations and a progressive development of examples ranging from simple combinational applications to a CISC architecture built upon a RISC core. A thorough coverage of traditional topics is combined with attention to computer- aided design, problem formulation, solution verification, and the building of problem-solving skills. Flexibility is provided for selective coverage of logic design, digital system design, and computer design topics, and for coverage of hardware description languages (none, VHDL, or Verilog®).

With these revisions, Chapters 1 through 4 of the book treat logic design, Chapters 5 through 7 deal with digital systems design, and Chapters 8 through 12 focus on computer design. This arrangement provides solid digital system design fundamentals while accomplishing a gradual, bottom-up development of fundamentals for use in top-down computer design in later chapters. Summaries of the topics covered in each chapter follow.