MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

EECS Fall 1996 Catalogue Supplement

6.915 Digital Systems Engineering

TR 11-12:30, 36-144
3-0-9
Prof. William Dally, NE43-620, x6043

This subject is intended to fill a gap between circuit design (6.002) and logic design or architecture (6.004/6.823). It can be taken by any undergraduate who has completed 6.002. Topics include:

1. What is digital systems engineering?

2. Wires: properties and modeling

3. Circuits: review and basic circuit building blocks

4. Noise in digital systems

• sources of noise
• noise management techniques
• noise immunity and noise margins

• the distribution problem
• on-chip distribution
• global distribution
• shunt and series regulators
• bypass capacitors
• examples

• choice of symbols: binary vs. multi-level
• current vs. voltage mode signalling
• references and noise rejection
• bidirectional signalling
• band-limited signalling
• examples

• timing basics
• timing noise: skew and jitter
• signals and events
• event encoding
• synchronous timing
• pipelined timing
• closed-loop timing systems
• clock distribution and deskew

• the synchronization problem
• synchronization failure and metastability
• the synchronization hierarchy
• mesochronous synchronizers
• periodic synchronizers
• asynchronous design

10. Timing circuits

11. Case studies