EECS150 - Digital Design

Lecture 1 - Introduction

January 17, 2012

John Wawrzynek
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
University of California, Berkeley

http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs150

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 Teaching Staff
Professor John Wawrzynek
(Warznek)
631 Soda Hall
johnw@cs.berkeley.edu
Office Hours: Tu 1-2pm, & by appointment.

Shaoyi Cheng: Daiwei Li: James Parker:

discussions sessions, labs, project labs, project
homework

Michael Austin

All TA office hours held in 125 Cory. Check website for days and times.
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Electronics all around us Communications
Infrastructure

Consumer
Products

Aerospace and
Military
Automotive

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Automotive
 Course Content
Components and Design Techniques for Digital Systems
more specifically
Synchronous Digital Hardware Systems
• Synchronous: “Clocked” - all changes in the system are controlled
by a global clock and happen at the same time (not asynchronous)
• Digital: All inputs/outputs and internal values (signals) take on
discrete values (not analog).
– Example digital representation: music waveform

– A series of numbers is used to represent the waveform,

rather than a voltage or current, as in analog systems.
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 Course Content - Design Layers
Not a course on computer architecture or the
architecture of other systems. Although we will look at
these as examples.

High-level Organization : Hardware Architectures

System Building Blocks : Arithmetic units, controllers
Circuit Elements : Memories, logic blocks
Transistor-level circuit implementations
Circuit primitives : Transistors, wires
Not a course on transistor physics and transistor
circuits. Although, we will look at these to better
understand the primitive elements for digital circuits.

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 Course Content
Programming Languages
Deep Digital Design Experience
Asm / Machine Lang
Fundamentals of Boolean Logic
CS 61C
Instruction Set Arch Synchronous Circuits
Machine Organization Finite State Machines
HDL Timing & Clocking
Device Technology & Implications
FlipFlops
Controller Design
Gates Arithmetic Units
Encoding, Framing
Circuits
Testing, Debugging
EE 40 Devices Hardware Architecture
Transistor Physics Hardware Design Language (HDL)
IC processing Design Flow (CAD)

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 Course Evolution

• Final project circa 1980:

– Example project: pong game with buttons for paddle and
LEDs for output.
– Few 10’s of logic gates
– Gates hand-wired together on “bread-board” (protoboard).
– No computer-aided design tools
– Debugged with oscilloscope and logic analyzer

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 Course Evolution

• Final project circa 1995:

– Example project: MIDI music synthesizer
– Few 1000’s of logic gates
– Gates wired together internally on field programmable gate array
(FPGA) development board with some external components.
– Circuit designed “by-hand”, computer-aided design tools to help map the
design to the hardware.
– Debugged with circuit simulation, oscilloscope and logic analyzer

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 Moore’s Law – 2x stuff per 1-2 yr

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 Course Evolution

• Final project circa 2000-2008:

– Example project: eTV - streaming
video broadcast over Ethernet,
student project decodes and
displays video Calinx Board
– Few 10,000’s of logic gates
– Gates wired together internally on FPGA
development board and communicate
with standard external components.
– Circuit designed with logic-synthesis
tools, computer-aided design tools to
help map the design to the hardware.
– Debugged with circuit simulation, logic
analyzer, and in-system debugging tools.

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 Course Evolution

• Beginning 2009:
– Xilinx XUPV5
development board (a.k.a
ML505)
– Could enable very aggressive
final projects.
– But, modest use of resources
this semester.
– Project debugging with
simulation tools and with in-
system hardware debugging • State-of-the-art LX110T
tools. FPGA: ~1M logic gates.
– Interfaces: Audio in/out, digital video,
ethernet, on-board DRAM, PCIe,
USB, ...
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 Final Project: Spring 2012


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

 





 

 

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

• Executes most commonly used MIPS instructions.

• Pipelined (high performance) implementation.
• Serial console interface for shell interaction, debugging, data-transfer.
• Instruction and data caches
• Video interface for display with 2-D vector graphics acceleration.
• Supported by a C language compiler.
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 Administrivia

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 Enrollment
• If you are on the waiting list and have taken 61c
or equivalent, you will be added.
• If you are enrolled and plan to take the course
you must attend your lab section this week and
next.
• Lab sections this week (meet TAs, pick up accounts,
simple “warm-up” lab exercise)
• No discussion sections this week.

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 Attendance
• Attend regular lectures and ask questions, offer comments,
etc.

• Attend your lab section. You must stick with the same lab
section all semester.
– Lab exercises will be done individually; project with a partner.
– We will put together a lab section exchange in a few weeks to help
you move to a different section.

• Attend any discussion section. You may attend any discussion

section that you want regardless of which one you are enrolled
in.

• The entire teaching staff hold regular office hours (see class
webpage). Take advantage of this opportunity! Come early
(and often). Don’t wait until the night before an assignment
is due!
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 Course Materials
Textbook: Harris & Harris
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
• Class notes, homework & lab assignments,
solutions, and other documentation will be
available on the class webpage linked to the
calendar:
http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs150
– Check the class webpage and newsgroup often!
– Updated posts will occur.

piazza For online Q/A.

http://www.piazzza.com/
More info later.
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 Course Grading
• Comprehensive Exam held during
Finals week: Monday May 7
Final 11:30-2:30.
Exam Midterm • Project critical part of the course -
25% Exam graded on timeliness, completeness
20% and optimality. Lots more on this later.
Project • Evening midterm exam, Wed March
HW 21, 6-9pm.
30% 20%
• Weekly homework based on reading
and lectures.
• out before the end of each week,
due before Th lecture of following
labs
week.
5%
• Lab exercises for weeks 1-6, followed
by project checkpoints and final
checkoff.
• Labs due at the beginning of your next
lab session.
• Checkpoints due date in handouts.
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 Tips on How to Get a Good Grade
The lecture material is not the most challenging part of the course.
• You should be able to understand everything as we go along.
• Do not fall behind in lecture and tell yourself you “will figure it out later from the
notes or book”.
• Notes will be online before the lecture (usually the night before). Look at them
before class. Do assigned reading (only the required sections).
• Ask questions in class and stay involved in the class - that will help you
understand. Come to office hours to check your understanding or to ask
qestions.
• Complete all the homework problems - even the difficult ones.
• The exams will test your depth of knowledge. You need to understand the
material well enough to apply it in new situations.
You need to do well on the project to get a good course grade.
• Take the labs very seriously. They are an integral part of the course.
• Choose your partner carefully. Your best friend may not be the best choice!
• Most important (this comes from 30+ years of hardware design experience):
• Be well organized and neat with homework, labs, project.
• In lab, add complexity a little bit at a time - always have a working design.
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 Cheating
• We have posted the details of my cheating policy on the
class web site. Please read it and ask questions.
• If you turn in someone else's work as if it were your own,
you are guilty of cheating.  This includes homework sets,
answers on exams, verilog code, block diagrams, etc.
• Also, if you knowingly aid in cheating, you are guilty.
• We have software that automatically compares your
submitted work to others.
• However, it is okay to discuss with others lab exercises
and the project. Okay to work together on homework.
But everyone must turn in their own work.
• If we catch you cheating, I will give you an F on the
assignment.  If it is a midterm exam, final exam, or final
project, I will give you an F in the class.  In either case,
will be reported to the office of student conduct. 
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 A few basic concepts

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 Example Digital Systems
• General Purpose Desktop/Server Digital Computer

– Often designed to maximize performance. "Optimized for speed"

• Handheld Calculator
- Usually designed to minimize cost.
“Optimized for low cost”

- Of course, low cost comes at the expense of

speed.

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 Example Digital Systems
• Digital Watch

Designed to minimize power.

Single battery must last for years.

– Low power operation comes at the expense of:

• lower speed
• higher cost

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 Basic Design Tradeoffs

• You can improve on one at the expense of worsening one

or both of the others.
• These tradeoffs exist at every level in the system design -
every sub-piece and component.
• Design Specification -
– Functional Description.
– Performance, cost, power constraints.
• As a designer you must make the tradeoffs necessary to
achieve the function within the constraints.
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 Hierarchy & Design Representation

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 Hierarchy in Designs
• Helps control complexity -
– by hiding details and reducing the total number of things to handle at
any time.
• Modulalizes the design -
– divide and conquer
– simplifies implementation and debugging
• Top-Down Design
– Starts at the top (root) and works down by successive refinement.
• Bottom-up Design
– Starts at the leaves & puts pieces together to build up the design.
• Which is better?
– In practice both are needed & used.
• Need top-down divide and conquer to handle the complexity.
• Need bottom-up because in a well designed system, the structure
is influence by what primitives are available.

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 Digital Design: What’s it all about?
Given a functional description and performance, cost, & power constraints,
come up with an implementation using a set of primitives.
• How do we learn how to do this?
1. Learn about the primitives and how to use them.
2. Learn about design representations.
3. Learn formal methods and tools to manipulate the representations.
4. Look at design examples.
5. Use trial and error - CAD tools and prototyping. Practice!
• Digital design is in some ways more an art than a science. The
creative spirit is critical in combining primitive elements & other
components in new ways to achieve a desired function.
• However, unlike art, we have objective measures of a design:

Performance Cost Power

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 Sychronous System Review from CS61C

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 Integrated Circuit Example
• PowerPC microprocessor micro-
photograph
– Superscalar (3 instructions/cycle)
– 6 execution units (2 integer and 1 double
precision IEEE floating point)
– 32 KByte Instruction and Data L1 caches
– Dual Memory Management Units (MMU)
– External L2 Cache interface with
integrated controller and cache tags.

Comprises only transistors and wires.

Connections to outside world (ex.

motherboard)
• Memory interface
• Power (Vdd, GND)
• Clock input

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 Clock Signal

Τ represents
the time of one
clock “cycle”.

A source of regularly occurring pulses used to measure the passage of

time.

• Waveform diagram shows evolution of signal value (in voltage) over time.

• Usually comes from an off-chip crystal-controlled oscillator.

• One main clock per chip/system.
• Distributed throughout the chip/system.
• “Heartbeat” of the system. Controls the rate of computation by directly
controlling all data transfers.
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 Data Signals
Random adder circuit at a random
point in time:

Observations:
1. Most of the time, signals are in
either low- or high-voltage position.
2. When the signals are at the high-
or low-voltage positions, they are
not all the way to the voltage
extremes (or they are past).
3. Changes in the signals correspond
to changes in clock signal (but don’t
change every cycle).
The facts:
1. Low-voltage represents binary 0 and high-voltage, binary 1.
2. Circuits are designed and built to be “restoring” and deviations from ideal
voltages are ignored. Outputs close to ideal.
3. In synchronous systems, all changes follow clock edges.

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 Circuit Delay
Digital circuits cannot produce
outputs instantaneously.
• In general, the delay through a
circuit is called the propagation
delay. It measures the time from
when inputs arrive until the
outputs change.
• The delay amount is a function of
many things. Some out of the
control of the circuit designer:
– Processing technology, the
particular input values.
• And others under her control:
– Circuit structure, physical layout
parameters.

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 Bus Signals
Signal wires grouped together
often called a bus.
• X0 is called the least
significant bit (LSB)
• X3 is called the most
significant bit (MSB)
• Capital X represents the
entire bus.
– Here, hexadecimal digits
are used to represent the
values of all four wires.
– The waveform for the bus
depicts it as being
simultaneiously high and
low. (The hex digits give the
bit values). The waveform
just shows the timing.

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 Combinational Logic Blocks
abcd y
• Example four-input function:
0000 F(0,0,0,0)
0001 F(0,0,0,1)
0010 F(0,0,1,0)
0011 F(0,0,1,1)
0100 F(0,1,0,0)
0101 F(0,1,0,1)
0110 F(0,1,1,0)
1111 F(0,1,1,1)
1000 F(1,0,0,0)
1001 F(1,0,0,1)
• True-table representation of function. 1010 F(1,0,1,0)
Output is explicitly specified for each 1011 F(1,0,1,1)
1100 F(1,1,0,0)
input combination.
1101 F(1,1,0,1)
• In general, CL blocks have more than 1110 F(1,1,1,0)
one output signal, in which case, the 1111 F(1,1,1,1)
truth-table will have multiple output
columns.

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 Example CL Block
• 2-bit adder. Takes two 2-bit a1 a0 b1 b0 c2 c1 c0
integers and produces 3-bit result. 00 00 000

00 01 001

00 10 010

00 11 011

01 00 001

01 01 010

01 10 011

01 11 100

10 00 010

10 01 011

10 10 100

10 11 101
• Think about true table for 32-bit 11 00 011
adder. It’s possible to write out, 11 01 100

but it might take a while! 11 10 101

11 11 110

Theorem: Any combinational logic function can

be implemented as a networks of logic gates.
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 Logic “Gates”
AND ab c OR ab c NOT a b
00 0 00 0 0 1
01 0 01 1 1 0
10 0 10 1
11 1 11 1

NAND ab c NOR ab c XOR ab c

00 1 00 1 00 0
01 1 01 0 01 1
10 1 10 0 10 1
11 0 11 0 11 0

• Logic gates are often the primitive elements out of which combinational logic circuits
are constructed.
– In some technologies, there is a one-to-one correspondence between logic gate
representations and actual circuits.
– Other times, we use them just as another abstraction layer (FPGAs have no real logic
gates).
• How about these gates with more than 2 inputs?
• Do we need all these types?

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 Example Logic Circuit
abc y
000 0
001 0
010 0
011 1
100 0
101 1
110 1
111 1

• How do we know that these two representations are equivalent?

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 Logic Gate Implementation
• Logic circuits have been built out of many different
technologies. As we know, as long as we have a basic logic
gate (AND or OR) and inversion we can build a complete logic
family.

DTL

Hydraulic
CMOS Gate
Mechanical LEGO logic gates.
A clockwise rotation represents
a binary “one” while a counter-
clockwise rotation represents a
binary “zero.”
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 Restoration
• A necessary property of any successful technology for logic
circuits is "Restoration".
• Circuits need:
– to ignore noise and other non-idealities at the their inputs, and
– generate "cleaned-up" signals at their output.
• Otherwise, each stage would propagates input noise to their
output and eventually noise and other non-idealities would
accumulate and signal content would be lost.

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 Inverter Example of Restoration
Example (look at 1-input gate, to keep it simple):

Actual Inverter
Idealize Inverter

• Inverter acts like a “non-linear” amplifier

• The non-linearity is critical to restoration
• Other logic gates act similarly with respect to input/output
relationship.
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 General Model for Synchronous Systems

• All synchronous digital systems fit this model:

– Collections of combinational logic blocks and state elements connected by
signal wires. These form a directed graph with only two types of nodes
(although the graph need not be bi-partite.)
– Instead of simple registers, sometimes the state elements are large memory
blocks.

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