431-467 Digital Systems 4: High Speed Systems

431-328 Digital Systems 3: Circuits and Systems

On completion of this subject students should have an appreciation of the critical design considerations needed for the construction of reliable high speed digital machines and understand the application of these ideas in certain application domains such as radar signal processing.

A selection of topics will cover the critical elements of high speed digital systems including power distribution, timing and clock distribution; synchronisation, asynchronous design techniques and properties, signalling conventions interconnects and buses, printed circuit board considerations, noise including cross-talk, intersymbol interference, flicker noise effects, EMI and EMC; and design issues for high speed multiprocessor and fast digital signal processing architectures for applications such as radar and communications.

One 3-hour end-of-semester written examination (70%); mid-semester test and/or project report not exceeding 20 pages including appendices, diagrams, tables, graphs and computer output (30%). The relative weighting of test and/or project report will be specified both in the first lecture and on the subject web page at the start of semester.