ELEC375 - Digital Systems
Short Description
ELEC375 provides a sequence of lectures and practical work on the design and methods of implementation of digital systems, including behavioural specification and description, architecture and structure design, software/hardware co-design, technology mapping, verification and test.
Students will gain experience in using various techniques, focusing on hardware-description languages, computer-aided design tools, large-scale field-programmable logic devices, VLSI circuits and embedded processor systems.
ELEC375 will give students, with a background in programming and prerequisite knowledge in computer hardware, the skills and new knowledge needed to design modern digital systems. The unit also helps students to gain an array of generic skills useful in future employment.
Assumed Knowledge
- Ability to evaluate alternative digital systems based on criteria such as "propagation delay", "clock frequency","number of components", "integration level"
- Ability to synthesise "combinational circuits" given "truth tables", and synthesise "sequential circuits" given "state transition diagrams"
- Ability to analyse Boolean equations and to derive equivalent circuit diagrams
- Ability to apply Boolean identities and Karnaugh maps to the minimisation of digital circuits
- Basic understanding of the functionality of medium-scale integrated circuits, arithmetic-logic-units of computers, memory systems, analogue-digital converters
- Knowledge of circuit characteristics (such as voltage levels and noise margins) of some families of integrated circuits
Learning Outcomes
- Ability to evaluate alternative digital systems based on criteria such as performance capability, hardware/software implementation, testability
- Ability to synthesise digital systems using programmable logic devices (in particular Generic Array Logic devices and Field Programmable Gate Arrays)
- Ability to analyse hierarchical structures of circuit schematics or Boolean equations
- Ability to apply hierarchical digital system design approaches using computer-aided-design software
- Basic understanding of high-level design languages (such as VHDL), "boundary scan testing", IEEE floating-point number system
- Knowledge of programmable logic devices (PLDs) and PLD design software
Study Engineering at Macquarie
Electronics
Degree programs in the areas of Electronics Engineering and Communication Systems are related areas of study concerned with technology that influences nearly every aspect of modern society. Electronics deals with the science and engineering of everyday items ranging from home appliances, entertainment systems, and telecommunications to city utilities, control systems for traffic, and transport. Communication Systems deals with the technology of conveying information between people using computers and/or electronic equipment such as radio or phones. Both these areas of study play an important role in business and manufacturing, and are about building and using systems for productive and leisure activities.