Understanding Modern Digital System Design: A Guide for Incoming Freshmen

[mlowery]

I will be taking Modern Digital System Design during the Fall 2006 semester at Texas Tech University. As I am an incoming freshman, I have nobody to consult about this class. If someone could please tell me what this class is about, what I should be expecting, and/or what I can do to prepare for it, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,
Mitchell

 

[berkeman]

I googled digital system design tutorial, and got lots of hits. Here's the hit list:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=digital+system+design+tutorial

You can browse around some of those pages, and that will start to give you a feel for what you'll be studying. The class will most likely start out with basic gates, then boolean logic, then Karnaugh maps for designing boolean logic, then state machines for designing synchronous logic blocks. And then you'll probably study CISC and RISC computer architectures at the logic block level. You'll hopefully have a lab with the class, where you get to design and build up some of these things that you're learning about.

It's a pretty fun subject, and very practical. You'll use the concepts a lot in your EE work, in just about anyone of the specialties. BTW, I'd recommend that you check out the book "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. If you can read that book cover-to-cover before school starts, you'll have a great foundation in basic circuits. Have fun!

 

[mlowery]

Thank you very much berkeman. That is extremely helpful.

 

[jbusc]

it seems you are taking this course?

2372. Modern Digital System Design (3:3:0). Prerequisite: Score on Mathematics Placement Examination (MPE) of 7, MATH 1350, 1550, or score on MPE of 5 and MATH 1321. An introduction to combinational and sequential digital systems.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_circuit, especially the subsection Structure of Digital Systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_circuit#Structure_of_digital_systems)

While that article has much more detail than you will probably cover, I imagine most of the "structure of digital systems" section will be covered and/or focused on.

 

[mlowery]

Thank you. That was very helpful. Sorry for the delayed reply.