431-204 Digital Systems 2: System Design

431-102 Digital Systems 1: Fundamentals

The objective of this course is to introduce the student to various tools and paradigms for digital system design and to further their knowledge of the technical language used in this field. The focus of the course is at a level of abstraction that sits between high-level system specification issues and low-level system realisation issues. Topics covered include hardwired and stored logic paradigms for digital system implementation; the hardware description language VHDL, as a tool for modelling digital systems; a lab based introduction to configurable logic devices such as PLDs and FPGAs; system interconnection structures, including an introduction to bus arbitration schemes and data-link level bus communication protocols; architectural and operational aspects of general purpose central processing units (CPUs); an introduction to the use of programming languages (assembly and high-level) in the design of stored logic systems and related low-level issues such as the binding of programme and data to memory; and memory and input/output organisations and interrupt mechanisms.

One written examination not exceeding three hours, practice classes, tests, laboratory reports and notebooks, assignments and project reports. Students will be notified of the weighting of assessment components at the beginning of the semester.