Computer Science, Electrical Engineering

SMD098 Computation Structures 6.0 ECTS credits

DENNA SIDA FINNS OCKSÅ PÅ SVENSKA

General information about studying at Luleå University
TIMEPERIOD: I

LANGUAGE: English/Swedish

EXAMINER
Glenn Jennings Univ lekt

PREREQUISITES
Imperative programming, Digital Design.

COURSE AIM
The course is designed to give the student an understanding of larger, functionally complex digital systems, together with foundational competence in methods for their design and implementation, especially toward VLSI technologies. Subgoals: - to give the student competence in the design of synchronous digital structures, given a problem description at a high level of abstraction. - to familiarize the student with different types of modelling methodologies and design tools which support the design process beginning with the first evaluations and trial models; those methods and tools are common to both implementation by synthesis (e.g., toward gate netlists and LUT-based FPLDs), and to implementation in low-level silicon (e.g., full-custom layout, module generators). - to acquaint the student to a number of different VLSI-based implementation paradigms and technologies, their relative possibilities and limitations, when to choose which, and how the design process is modified to accomodate those choices. - to give an introduction to the physical properties of digital electronics, and how these must already be taken into account during the earliest phases of digital design: speed, size, power, synchronization with the environment, etc.

CONTENTS
Architecture and Block Level Design: Explorative structured design methodology. Register transfer level (RTL), event-driven and cyle simulation. Synchronization methods in larger designs. The flip-flop, the latch and two-phase clocking, parallelism, pipelining, multicycling. Races and skew. Design hierarchy. Hardware description languages (e.g. VHDL, Verilog), block editors, specialized models as harware descriptions (e.g., COSSAP). Logic Synthesis: Functional descriptions of combinational networks. Tools for two-level and multi-level logic minimization. Mapping to implementation library. Classical state machine languages. Clock frequency, static timing analysis, critical paths, Interface to the environment: handshaking, standard protocols; standard busses (e.g. PCI). Difficulties caused by mesochronous and high-speed digital input signals.

TEACHING
Instruction consists of lectures and compulsory laboratories.

EXAMINATION
Written exam. Final course grade based on both the written examination and the laboratiories: quantitative grade.
COURSE GRADE SCALE: U,3,4,5

ITEMS AND CREDITS 
Written exam                                                	6.0 ECTS

COURSE LITERATURE
To be determined.

REMARKS
This course replaces SMD075, and is prerequisite both to SMD099 ("Digital Design on Silicon") and to SMDxxx (tentatively named "Digital Design by Synthesis"). SMD099 and SMDxxx alternate every other year, and both may be taken by the same student.
Last modified 97-03-05
Further information: Glenn Jennings
Back to departement menu