This is a course for non-electrical engineering majors that covers the analysis, design, simulation, and construction of digital logic circuits and systems. The material in this course provides the necessary tools to design digital hardware circuits such as clocks and security devices, as well as computer hardware. The course begins with the study of binary and hexadecimal number systems, Boolean algebra, and their application to the design of combinational logic circuits. The first half of the course focuses on designs using small-scale integration (SSI) logic circuits, medium-scale integration (MSI) circuits, and programmable logic devices (PLDs) to implement combinational logic functions. The second half of the course emphasizes sequential logic circuits like counters and sequence recognizers, and also covers memory systems. Laboratory work in this half of the course focuses on using very high speed integrated circuit hardware description language (VHDL) to simulate digital systems and to program those systems into PLDs. Throughout the course, the focus is on how the various digital hardware devices are used to perform the internal operations of a computer.
