ECE 353: Digital Systems Design
Fall 2011
Slide Set #1: Introduction
Instructor: Dr. Tor Aamodt
aamodt@ece.ubc.ca
Slide Set 1, Page 1
iPhone 3G
Slide Set 1, Page 2
Communication Circuits
•
24 100 Meg + 2 Gig Port
Ethernet Switch
- 60 Million Transistors
- Over 4 Million Gates
- 8Mb of Embedded
RAM
Source: Henry Samulei, Broadcom, D.A.C. 2001
Slide Set 1, Page 3
Intel Core i5 (Sandy Bridge)
• 4 CPU cores + 1 GPU, 216 mm2 995M transistors
Slide Set 1, Page 4
2006 – Sony, Toshiba, IBM –
Cell processor
- 8 processing elements
- 1 PowerPC core
- 4 GHz
- 234,000,000 transistors
Slide Set 1, Page 5
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 GPU
• 1.4 Billion transistors
Shader
Processors
Texture
Memory
Controllers
Thread
Scheduler
Shader
Processors
Slide Set 1, Page 6
Control Applications
Slide Set 1, Page 7
Automotive Electronics
7-Series BMW:
63 Embedded
Processors
•
Mercedes S-Class
65 Embedded
Processors
More than 80% of
the innovation in
autos is from
innovations in
electronics
- Daimler-Chrysler
Automotive
Semiconductor
Market: US$13.1
billion / year
Slide Set 1, Page 8
Biomedical Applications
Medical Applications
•
Diagnostic Applications
Slide Set 1, Page 9
• Designing these chips is challenging.
• But, you could be doing this by the end of
next year!
Slide Set 1, Page 10
Beyond Silicon…
Molecular Programming with DNA
Ain
C (output)
Bin
G. Seelig, D. Soloveichik, D. Y. Zhang, E. Winfree (Science, 314: 1585-1587, 2006)
Slide Set 1, Page 11
To learn how to design these chips:
1. Learn the basics of digital design. You did this last year in
EECE 256 / PIP
2. Learn how large, real digital circuits are designed. This is
what this course is all about
3. Learn how to put the circuits on a chip. You’ll learn this in
EECE 479 Introduction to VLSI.
4. Learn how to ‘architect’ complex chips. You’ll learn this in
EECE 476 Computer Architecture.
After these courses, many UBC Grads design real chips for
real companies (PMC-Sierra, Broadcom, Cypress, Altera,
Xilinx, Intel, AMD)
Slide Set 1, Page 12
• Don’t be afraid of Hardware!
Slide Set 1, Page 13
Who might be interested in this course?
• This course will be useful for:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Those of you that want to design chips
Those of you that want to design communication/power systems
Those of you that want to control real things (robots)
Those of you that want to design biomedical applications
Those of you that want to write software
Anyone else interested in Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Have I forgot anyone?
Slide Set 1, Page 14
VHDL/Verilog
System C
Schematics/diagrams
CAD tools
Custom chips Board level FPGA
Gate arrays
Slide Set 1, Page 15
Lectures in this course
• We will talk about techniques that are useful no
matter how you are specifying digital circuits:
–
–
–
–
–
Combinational Design
Sequential Design
Datapath Design
Arithmetic Circuits
Timing Methodologies
• We will spend some time talking about VHDL in
particular
Slide Set 1, Page 16
Labs in this course
Four labs, where you get to do something REAL.
(will replace one lab with at home Quartus assignment)
You in the lab. Test your
design on a real board.
You at home or in the
computer room: design your
systems using CAD software
(textbook or on the web)
TA
Slide Set 1, Page 17
Labs in this course
Four labs, where you get to do something REAL.
You in the lab. Test your
design on a real board.
You at home or in the
computer room: design your
systems using CAD
software
(textbook or on the web)
TA
To ensure you have enough time to complete your labs,
you are required to submit your preparation (on Vista)
before start of your lab section.
Slide Set 1, Page 18
More on the Labs
• One important skill you will learn in the EECE 353 labs is how to
debug complex systems. This is a skill highly prized by
employers. If you make a point of learning to be good at
debugging you will also save a huge amount of time.
• The following book can help you become much better at
debugging anything, including your labs in 353: “Debugging:
The Nine Indispensable Rules for Finding Even the Most
Elusive Software and Hardware Problems” by David J. Agans.
http://www.books24x7.com/marc.asp?isbn=0814471684
http://www.debuggingrules.com/
(You must be logged into UBC VPN to access the first
URL... You can sign up for a free books24x7 account.)
• NOTE: This is not a book on VHDL. It is a book on how to
debug systems that are not working. The book is very easy to
read and well worth the time, but I suggest you read it early in
the semester.
Slide Set 1, Page 19
“Rules” of the course:
• See the “Facts Sheet” handout.
• Midterm is on Wednesday November 2nd
• Tutorials on Friday:
– Some tutorials will be review sessions, in some we will talk about
the lab, and in some we will have quizzes based upon the
problem sets. You should attend! THIS WEEK: Review of some
stuff from last year
• Lab sections:
– If you want to switch lab sections, you can, as long as you find
someone to switch with
• There are only so many boards in the lab, no way to “squeeze”
another seat in any section
• I have asked for per lab section size to be increased to 32 to allow
students to register
Slide Set 1, Page 20
WebCT (Vista)
We will use WebCT (Vista)
You should use this to:
- Register your iClicker (more on clickers in next slide)
- Get lecture slides and assignment handouts
- Ask questions about assignments, project, lecture material
- Answer questions from your colleagues
- Keep up to date with course announcements and HINTS
You will get an answer here MUCH FASTER than a direct email.
If you don’t check this regularly, you will be at a SEVERE
DISADVANTAGE!
Follow proper bulletin-board etiquette
- Everyone else in the class will thank you
Slide Set 1, Page 21
Clickers
•
Clickers have been shown to enhance student
learning (you learn better when you are tested on
what you know). I have observed much better
“learning outcomes” from students using them.
• 5% of final grade. Most questions you get full marks
for participation. However, some questions you’ll
need to get right to get full marks.
• I’ll make it clear a question is “for marks” by starting
the question with “[GRADED]” and use a blue
outlined box instead of red outlined box.
• We will start using them next lecture.
• Register your clicker on WebCT Vista.
• NOTE: UBC introduced a new clicker system (Sept
2008). I use clickers in EECE 476 as well, so if you
take that course you can use it again there.
s
w1
I’ll use a box like the one to the right
w2
for questions/answers. This particular
question would be marked for participation
only since the border is red.
What is
is this
this circuit?
circuit?
What
0
1
f
A: Multiplexer ✔
B: State machine
C: Half-adder
D: Full-adder
Slide Set 1, Page 22
• Here is what a clicker question where you need to get
the correct answer to get full marks looks like:
[GRADED (out of 2 marks)]
What is this circuit?
s
w1
w2
0
1
f
A: Multiplexer ✔
B: State machine
C: Half-adder
D: Full-adder
[2 marks]
[0 marks]
[0 marks]
[0 marks]
Slide Set 1, Page 23
Slides vs. Black Board
I’ll be making heavy use of Powerpoint, but….
- Some material is easier to learn if we work it out on the board
- I will occasionally (deliberately) leave some parts of slides out that
you need to fill in.
Make sure you bring pen and paper to take notes in class.
If you miss a class, make sure you talk to someone to find out
what you missed.
Slide Set 1, Page 24
What you should know from last year
Some of you were in PIP, some in Traditional Program
In either case, you should know basic logic design, state machine design,
numerical representations
Some of you have seen some VHDL, but you do not need
to know VHDL already since we are going to learn
it in this course.
The textbook has a good review of most
of the material
-> Sections 2.1 to 2.8 (either edition of
the text book) contain some
review material
Slide Set 1, Page 25
The Textbook
We won’t go through the textbook strictly in order
- Because, we need some information for the labs early
Rough Outline:
Combinational Logic (Chapter 2, Chapter 6)
Sequential Logic (Chapter 7, Chapter 8)
Arithmetic Circuits (Chapter 5)
Datapath and System Design (Chapter 10)
Asynchronous Circuits (Chapter 9)
I’ll introduce VHDL as we go through
Don’t worry, I’ll help you figure it out in the lectures…
Slide Set 1, Page 26
Best way to learn…
Context-- What does research say achieves the most learning of any educational approach?*
 expert individual tutor
Large impact on all students
Average for class with expert individual tutors
>98% of students in class with standard instruction
Q: Are you making best use you can of “office hours”?
Expert individual tutor
standard
instruction
# students
grade
This slide from:
“What all instructors should know about learning”
Carl Wieman, UBC, March 2008
* Bloom et al Educational Researcher, Vol. 13, pg. 4
When/How to Study?
Retention enhanced by repeated spaced retrieval, number of mental
“hooks”, depth of processing.
• 5 hours studying one day vs. 1 hour/day for 5 days
performance in short term? about the same
performance 3 months later? 1hr/day higher
• It has also been shown that people tend to overestimate how much
time they’ll have to do work in the future. Think back to March-April 
• Thus, start studying early to avoid “Murphy’s Law”. Space out
studying. Ensure you “test” yourself while studying.
• Retention from review vs. retrieve & apply
i.e. hearing again or rereading vs. being tested
(by self or other), even if score unknown
This slide adapted from:
“What all instructors should know about learning”
Carl Wieman, UBC, March 2008
H. Roediger, J. Karpicke
Psych. Sci. Vol.17 pg 249
Getting and Staying Ahead
Famous experiment on “Delayed Gratification” (One marshmallow
now, or two later?)
Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., Peake, P. K. (1990). Predicting adolescent cognitive and self-regulatory
competencies from preschool delay of gratification: Identifying diagnostic conditions. Developmental
Psychology, 26(6), 978–986.
Top third of 4 year olds—those who waited longer before eating the
marshmallow—year later scored 210 points (13%) higher than the
bottom third on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), when finishing high
school. This correlation accounted for about 25% of the observed
difference in student SAT scores.
Stephen Covey: Recognize difference between “Urgent” and “Important”. Urgent
means do soon. Important means has big impact on your future. Not all things
that are urgent are important, not everything that is important is urgent (so, for
example, put away that laptop computer and force yourself to pay attention while
in lecture; force yourself to do textbook reading before lectures).
Richard Hamming: Knowledge is like compound interest (the more you know, the
easier it is to learn something new).
Slide Set 1, Page 29