Richard S. Sandige
DIGITAL DESIGN ESSENTIALS
Hardcover, pp. 670, plus XVIII, $ 56,99
Prentice Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458, 2002
ISBN 0-201-47698-4
http://www.pearsoneduc.com

In general about the book

No field of technology has had or is likely to continue to have more a profound impact on our lives than digital system development. The theory and practice of these systems have developed over the last 50 years and have received a dramatic impulse because of the rapid growth of digital communications, digital instruments, digital entertainment technology, and especially of general- purpose computers. Today's designers are confronted with tasks relating to thorough understanding of VLSI ICs design's principles, correct selection of architecture with goal to fulfil the functional requirements, choose a corresponding set of design software tools to support the ICs, etc.

This book is for everyone who wants to design and build systems with real digital circuits. Its objective is to provide an introduction to the basic principles in the analysis and design systems based on combinational and sequential logic circuits, and in addition to incorporate a contemporary design approach with modern CAD tools. The book is structured into three major parts: combinational logic design (chapters 1-4), sequential logic design (chapters 5- 6), and HDL chip design (Chapter 7). At the end, three appendices that deal with types of digital circuits and selection of programmable logic devices (PLDs), Bibliography and Index are added. The Xilinx Foundation Express digital-design tools on two CD-ROMs at the end of this book are appended.

The text organization is as follows.

Chapter content

Chapter 1 provides standard coverage of binary number representations, and considers conversion techniques and signed number representations. It also discusses binary arithmetic operations and binary codes.

Chapter 2 deals with logic function representation and minimization. It gives details concerning postulates, Boolean algebra theorems, canonical or standard forms of functions, and function minimization. Chapter 3 teaches combinational logic design principles. It provides an in- depth coverage of traditional combinational logic analysis, minimization and synthesis techniques. This chapter also provides a detailed coverage of combinational logic implementation using PLDs. The realization of BCD to 7-segment display system is thoroughly discussed. Chapter 4 concentrates on larger combinational circuit design examples. It shows how the design can be carried out with MUXs, decoders, adders, subtractors, multipliers and ALUs, via a data- flow modular design process. At the end one realization of keypad display system is illustrated.

Chapter 5 presents the basic concept of sequential circuits. It introduces a reader with details concerning how sequential circuits are designed using fundamental building blocks such as latches and flip-flops. Realizations of several systems based on sequential circuits, such as keypad display system with storage, multiplexed display system, and frequency division for digital watch circuit, illustrate techniques for designing practical digital problems. Chapter 6 extends discussion of designing with sequential circuits. It involves the reader into more detail and larger projects with synchronous finite-state machine design. Also details for implementing synchronous vending machine controllers, fundamental mode (clockless) vending machine controllers, and pulse-mode (clockless) vending machine controllers, that show a multiplicity of ways to design a specified digital problem, are given.

Chapter 7 concentrates on VHDL synthesis. It includes the following two topics: writing VHDL source code for combinational logic circuits, and writing VHDL source code for synchronous logic circuits.

Useful book

I find this book to be well written, interesting, timely and appropriate. Its general organization is reasonable in terms of both overall coverage and chapter headings. Almost each chapter includes a number of examples presented in special subsections -Exercises to test your knowledge-, perhaps the most attractive future of the book. The material in this book is appropriate for introductory course in digital logic design in electrical or computer engineering or computer science curricula. The complete book can be covered in one-semester course. In addition the aim of this book is to provide the reader with the CAD tools necessary to design large digital circuits. In related sense VHDL behavioral and architectural descriptions of various circuits, combinational and sequential are provided in the last chapter for those students who wish to have or require a hardware description language in the study of digital systems. This book should also be extremely useful for practicing engineers who took logic design course five or more years ago, to update their knowledge. All in all, the book is pleasant addition to the literature.