An Introduction To Digital Computer Design

This highly acclaimed, well established, book now in its fifth edition, is intended for an introductory course in digital computer design for B.Sc. students of computer science, B.Tech. students of computer science and engineering, and BCA/MCA students of computer applications. A knowledge of programming in C or Java would be useful to give the student a proper perspective to appreciate the development of the subject. The first part of the book presents the basic tools and developes procedures suitable for the design of digital circuits and small digital systems. It equips students with a firm understanding of logic principles before they study the intricacies of logic organization and architecture of computers in the second part. Besides discussing data representation, arithmetic operations, Boolean algebra and its application in designing combinatorial and sequential switching circuits, the book introduces the Algorithmic State Machines which are used to develop a hardware description language for the design of digital systems. The organization of a small hypothetical computer is described to illustrate how instruction sets are evolved. Real computers (namely, Pentium and MIPs machines) are described and compared with the hypothetical computer. After discussing the features of a CPU, I/O devices and I/O organization, cache and virtual memory, the book concludes with a new chapter on the use of parallelism to enhance the speed of computers. Besides, the fifth edition has new material in CMOS gates, MSI/ALU and Pentium5 architecture. The chapter on Cache and Virtual Memory has been rewritten.

I have been using the first edition of this book as a text for a number of years. This was in a Stanford University first-year graduate course that is taken by students from Electrical Engineering or Computer Science who are interested in computer organization. Because computer tech nology has been changing so rapidly, it became necessary to supplement the text with additional readings. My colleagues and I examined many newly-published books for possible use as texts. We found no book with the same excellent choice of topics and thorough coverage as Dr. Gschwind's first edition. Springer-Verlag's request that I prepare a second edition of this book came at a time when I had many other projects underway. Before I de cided whether to take on the project of preparing a revision, I asked many of my students for their opinions of Dr. Gschwind's first edition. Even I was surprised by the enthusiasm that this rather skeptical and critical group of students displayed for the book. It was this enthusiasm that convinced me of the value and importance of preparing the revision.

Digital Computer Design: Logic, Circuitry, and Synthesis focuses on the logical structure, electronic realization, and application of digital information processors. The manuscript first offers information on numerical symbols, fundamentals of computing aids, quantization, representation of numbers in an electronic digital computer, and computer applications. The text then ponders on the nature of automatic computation and Boolean algebra. Discussions focus on the advantages of a Boolean algebraic description of a digital computer; clock pulse generators and timing circuits; sequential switching networks; elements of information processing systems and types of digital computers; and automatic sequencing methods. The book elaborates on circuit descriptions of switching and storage elements and large capacity storage systems. Topics include static magnetic storage, dynamic delay line storage, cathode-ray storage, vacuum tube systems of circuit logic, and magnetic core systems of circuit logic. The publication also examines the system design of GP computers, digital differential analyzer, and the detection and correction of errors. The text is a valuable source of data for mathematicians and engineers interested in digital computer design.