Introduction

to
Digital
Electronics
 Suplementary Reading
• Digital Design
by - John F. Wakerly
– www.ddpp.com - you will find some solutions at this site.
– www.xilinx.com - Xlinix Web site
• Logic and Computer Design Fundamentals
by - M. Morris Mano & Charles R. Kime
• Digital Design
by - M. Morris Mano
• Digital Logic Circuit Analysis and Design
by - Victor P. Nelson, H. Troy Nagle, J. David Irwin & Bill D. Carrol
 Digital Electronics
• Digital Electronics represents information (0, 1) with
only two discrete values.
• Ideally
“no voltage” (e.g., 0v) represents a 0 and
“full source voltage” (e.g., 5v) represents a 1
• Realistically
“low voltage” (e.g., <1v) represents a 0 and
“high voltage” (e.g., >4v) represents a 1
• We achieve these discrete values by using switches.
• We use transistor switches, which operates at high speed,
electronically, a small in size.
 Analog versus Digital

• Analog systems process time-varying signals that

can take on any value across a continuous range
of voltages (in electrical/electronics systems).
• Digital systems process time-varying signals that
can take on only one of two discrete values of
voltages (in electrical/electronics systems).
– Discrete values are called 1 and 0 (ON and OFF,
HIGH and LOW, TRUE and FALSE, etc.)
 Representing Information Electronically
• A light bulb has to represent 4 different
information:
Bulb off - no student inside
Bulb 1/3 lit - 1 student inside
Bulb 2/3 lit - 2 student inside
Bulb Full lit - 3 student inside

• A light bulb has to represent 10 different

information:
– Is it possible to differentiate the ten different light
intensity?
 Representing Information Electronically
• A light bulb has to represent 2 different information:
Bulb off - no student inside
Bulb Full lit - 1 student inside

• A light bulb has to represent 4 different information:

– How? With one bulb?
– Use two bulbs

• A light bulb has to represent 10 different information:

– Use four bulbs
 Representing Information Electronically
• “Analog electronics” deals with non-discrete values

• “Digital electronics” deals with discrete values

 Benefits of Digital over Analog
• Reproducibility
• Not effected by noise means quality
• Ease of design
• Data protection
• Programmable
• Speed
• Economy
 Digital Revolution
• Digital systems started back in 1940s.
• Digital systems cover all areas of life:
– still pictures
– digital video
– digital audio
– telephone
– traffic lights
– Animation
 Digital Devices

• Gates
• Flip-Flops
• PLDs
• FPGAs
 Gates
• The most basic digital devices are called gates.
• Gates got their name from their function of
allowing or blocking (gating) the flow of digital
information.
• A gate has one or more inputs and produces an
output depending on the input(s).
• A gate is called a combinational circuit.
• Three most important gates are: AND, OR, NOT
 Digital Logic
• Binary system -- 0 & 1, LOW & HIGH,
negated and asserted.
• Basic building blocks -- AND, OR, NOT
AND, OR, NOT Gates
Electronic Aspects of Digital Design
• How we represent digital information in electronic devices?
• By discrete voltages.
 What is the
Basic Digital Element
in Electronics
?

a Switch
Using Switch to represent digital information
 Digital Abstraction
• It is difficult to make ideal switches means a
switch is completely ON or completely OFF.
• So, we impose some rules that allow analog
behavior to be ignored in most cases, so circuits
can be modeled as if they really did process 0s
and 1s, known as digital abstraction.
• Digital abstraction allows us to associate a noise
margin with each logic values (0 and 1).
Real Switches to represent digital information

5v 5v

1k

Output Output
5v 4.5v

10k
 Logic levels
• Undefined region
is inherent
digital, not analog

• Switching threshold varies with voltage, temp

need “noise margin”

• Logic voltage levels decreasing with new processors.

5 , 3.3 , 2.5 , 1.8 V
 MOS Transistors

Voltage-controlled resistance

PMOS

NMOS
CMOS Inverter
Switch model
 Flip-flops
• A device that stores either a 0 or 1.
• Stored value can be changed only at certain times
determined by a clock input.
• New value depend on the current state and it’s
control inputs
• A digital circuit that contains filp-flops is called a
sequential circuit
 Flip-flops

S-R latch symbols D flip-flop

J-K flip-flops
 Integrated Circuits
• A collection of one or more gates fabricated on a
single silicon chip is called an integrated circuit
(IC).
• ICs were classified by size:
– SSI - small scale integration - 1~20 gates
– MSI - medium scale integration - 20~200 gates
– LSI - large scale integration - 200~200,000 gates
– VLSI - very large scale integration - over 1M
transistors
• Pentium-III - 40 million transistors
DIP Packages
Gates in ICs
 Programmable Logic Devices
• PLDs allow the function to be programmed into
them after they are manufactured.
• Complex PLDs (CPLD) are a collection of PLDs
on the same chip.
• Another programmable logic chip is FPGA -
field-programmable gate arrays.
 CPLDs and FPGAs
CPLD FPGA
 Application Specific ICs (ASICs)
• Chips designed for a particular application are
called semicustom ICs or application-specific ICs
(ASICs).
• ASICs generally reduce the total component and
manufacturing cost of a product by reducing chip
count, physical size, and power consumption, and
they often provide higher performance.
• But costly if not produced in bulk.
 Printed-Circuit Boards
• An IC is normally mounted on a printed-circuit
board (PCB) that connects it to other ICs in a
system.
• Individual wire connection or traces can be as
narrow as 4 mils with 4 mils spacing (one-
thousandth of an inch)
• Now a days, most of the components use surface
mount technology.
• They are normally layered.
Software Aspects of Digital Design
• Today software tools are an essential part of digital
design.
• Software tools improve productivity, correctness and
quality of designs
• Software tools are:
– Schematic entry
– HDL (Hardware Description Language) Editors
– Simulators - to verify the behaviour of the design
– Synthesis tools - circuit design
– Timing analyzers and verifiers
 Digital Design Levels
• the lowest level of design is device physics and
IC manufacturing processes.
• design at the transistor level
• level of functional building blocks
• level of logic design using HDLs
• computer design and overall system design.
 Different Design Levels
Consider a simple design example:

Build a multiplexer with two data inputs A and B, a

control input S, and an output Z.

Switch model for the example multiplexer

 Designing at the transistor level
• Transistor-level
circuit diagrams

• Gate symbols (for simple elements)

• Logic design
using Truth tables
• Logic design
using boolean algebra
Equations: Z = S A+ S B

• Logic diagrams
• Prepackaged building blocks, e.g. multiplexer
• Various hardware
description languages
– ABEL

– VHDL

• We’ll start with gates

and work our way up
• Name of the program
module
• the type of PLD
• pin numbers
• ABEL statement to achieve
the multiplexer

• Standard library
• and a set of definitions

• Inputs and outputs

• functions behaviour
Structural VHDL program for the multiplexer
 Summery
• Design to minimize cost.
• Rule of thumb is to minimize the number of ICs.
• Though PLDs costs more but uses less PCB area.
• Unless mass production avoid ASIC design.
• Design to solve real life problems.