Digital Design: A Systems Approach

This introductory textbook provides students with a system-level perspective and the tools they need to understand, analyze and design digital systems. Going beyond the design of simple combinational and sequential modules, it shows how such modules are used to build complete systems, reflecting real-world digital design. All the essential topics are covered, including design and analysis of combinational and sequential modules, as well as system timing and synchronization. It also teaches how to write Verilog HDL in a productive and maintainable style that enables CAD tools to do much of the tedious work. A complete introduction to digital design is given through clear explanations, extensive examples and online Verilog files. The teaching package is completed with lecture slides, labs and a solutions manual for instructors. Assuming no previous digital knowledge, this textbook is ideal for undergraduate digital design courses that will prepare students for modern digital practice.

Table of Contents:
Part I. Introduction: 1. The digital abstraction; 2. The practice of digital system design; Part II. Combinational Logic: 3. Boolean algebra; 4. CMOS logic circuits; 5. Delay and power of CMOS circuits; 6. Combinational logic design; 7. Verilog descriptions of combinational logic; 8. Combinational building blocks; 9. Combinational examples; Part III. Arithmetic Circuits: 10. Arithmetic circuits; 11. Fixed- and floating-point numbers; 12. Fast arithmetic circuits; 13. Arithmetic examples; Part IV. Synchronous Sequential Logic: 14. Sequential logic; 15. Timing constraints; 16. Datapath sequential logic; 17. Factoring finite-state machines; 18. Microcode; 19. Sequential examples; Part V. Practical Design: 20. Verification and test; Part VI. System Design: 21. System-level design; 22. Interface and system-level timing; 23. Pipelines; 24. Interconnect; 25. Memory systems; Part VII. Asynchronous Logic: 26. Asynchronous sequential circuits; 27. Flip-flops; 28. Metastability and synchronization failure; 29. Synchronizer design; Appendix A. Verilog coding style; References; Index of Verilog modules; Subject index.

About the Author :
William James Dally is the Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor of Engineering at Stanford University, California and Chief Scientist at NVIDIA Corporation. He and his group have developed system architecture, network architecture, signaling, routing and synchronization technology that can be found in most large parallel computers today. He has many years of experience working in industry and academia, previously holding positions at Bell Labs, Caltech and MIT and consulting for Digital Equipment, Cray Research and Intel. He is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the ACM and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received numerous honors including the ACM Eckert–Mauchly Award, the IEEE Seymour Cray Award and the ACM Maurice Wilkes Award. He has published over 200 papers in these areas, holds over 75 issued patents and is an author of the textbooks Digital Systems Engineering and Principles and Practices of Interconnection Networks. R. Curtis Harting is a PhD candidate at Stanford University. He graduated with honors in 2007 from Duke University with a BSE, majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science. He received his MS in 2009 from Stanford University. His primary research interest is in computer architecture, focusing on parallel, high-performance and energy-efficient design.

Review :
'Dally and Harting blend circuit and architecture design in a clear and constructive manner on the basis of their exceptional experience in digital design. Students will discover a modern and effective way to understand the fundamental underpinning of digital design, by being exposed to the different abstraction levels and views of computing systems.' Giovanni De Micheli, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne 'Bill and Curt have combined decades of academic and industry experience to produce a textbook that teaches digital system design from a very practical perspective without sacrificing the theoretical understanding needed to train tomorrow's engineers. Their approach pushes students to understand not just what they are designing but also what they are building. By presenting key advanced topics, such as synthesis, delay and logical effort, and synchronization, at the introductory level, this book is in the rare position of providing both practical advice and deep understanding. In doing so, this book will prepare students well even as technology, tools, and techniques change in the future.' David Black-Schaffer, Uppsala University 'Everything you would expect from a book on digital design from [Professor] Dally. Decades of practical experience are distilled to provide the tools necessary to design and compose complete digital systems. A clear and well written text that covers the basics and system-level issues equally well. An ideal starting point for the microprocessor and SoC designers of the future!' Robert Mullins, University of Cambridge and the Raspberry Pi Foundation 'This textbook sets a new standard for how digital system design is taught to undergraduates. The practical approach and concrete examples [provide] a solid foundation for anyone who wants to understand or design modern complex digital systems.' Steve Keckler, University of Texas, Austin 'This book not only teaches how to do digital design, but more importantly shows how to do good design. It stresses the importance of modularization with clean interfaces, and the importance of producing digital artifacts that not only meet their specifications, but which can also be easily understood by others. It uses an aptly chosen set of examples and the Verilog code used to implement them … It includes a section on the design of asynchronous logic, a topic that is likely to become increasingly important as energy consumption becomes a primary concern in digital systems … The final appendix on Verilog coding style is particularly useful. This book will be valuable not only to students, but to practitioners in the area. I recommend it highly.' Chuck Thacker, Microsoft 'A terrific book with a terrific point of view of systems. Everything interesting - and awful - that happens in digital design happens because engineers must integrate ideas from bits to blocks, from signals to CPUs. The book does a great job of focusing on the important stuff, moving from foundations to systems, with the right amount of HDL (Verilog) focus to make everything practical and relevant.' Rob A. Rutenbar, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign