Contemporary Logic Design (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

by Randy H. Katz (Author), Gaetano Borriello (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
BASIC APPROACH In the past ten years there has been a revolution in the practice of hardware design. Professionals now rely on CAD software, rapid prototyping, and programmable logic devices to streamline the design process. Contemporary Logic Design is the first text to address these changes - and to offer a truly modern introduction to logic design. Throughout, the author complements his presentation of logic design theory with discussions of current design technologies. Approximately 60% of the book presents new material; the remainder has been re-organized and partially re-written to correspond to the organizational changes.

From the Back Cover

In the decade since the first edition of this book was published, the technologies of digital design have continued to evolve. The evolution has run along two related tracks: the underlying physical technology and the software tools that facilitate the application of new devices. The trends identified in the first edition have continued and promise to continue to do so. Programmable logic is virtually the norm for digital designers and the art of digital design now requires the software skills to deal with hardware description languages.

Hardware designers now spend the majority of their time dealing with software. Specifically, the tools needed to efficiently map digital designs onto the emerging programmable devices that are growing more sophisticated. They capture their design specifications in software with language appropriate for describing the parallelism of hardware; they use software tools to simulate their designs and then to synthesize it into the implementation technology of choice. Design time is radically reduced, as market pressures require products to be introduced quickly at the right price and performance.

Although the complexity of designs is necessitating ever more powerful abstractions, the fundamentals remain unchanged. The contemporary digital designer must have a much broader understanding of the discipline of computation, including both hardware and software. This broader perspective is present in this second edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 2 edition (December 25, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201308576
• ISBN-13: 978-0201308570
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #604,820 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A perfect introductory text to circuit logic design., March 26, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Contemporary Logic Design (Hardcover)

The very fact that several major universities use Contemporary Logic Design for their introductory digital logic design courses is a recommendation in itself; having taken just such a course using this book, I found both the 'lightweight' examples excellent for breaking new intellectual ground, and the 'in depth' example projects, developed from the initial specification, through all phases of design, and into the final implementation, often with resultant waveforms, to provide the much needed feel of the effort involved in a real design project. A perfect introductory text for anyone interested in circuit logic design.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid introduction to basics, June 7, 2005

By	wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This is a sound, competent introduction to the elements of contemporary logic design. It covers all the basics: boolean logic, gate implementations, and the elements of binary arithmetic. It talks about minimization techniques, logic delays, and some of the classic logic implementation technologies (PLAs, decoders, muxes). It gives the basics of common notation, including timing diagrams, gate-level schematics, and so on. The last few chapters discuss synchronous (clocked) design and design of state machines, including standard reduction techniques. All the basics of modern design are there. A good student will start to see the number of different ways any problem can be solved, and start to recongize that no one perspective will solve all problems, at least not well.

Asynchronous logic, based on stable states of combinational circuits with feedback, is one of the topics skipped. That's still important in the interior of flip-flops and in niche application areas, but asynchronous design certainly not in the main stream any more. Likewise, the authors skip over transistor-level design (mostly), the oddities of J-K flops, and most discussion of discrete or MSI logic. Well, that makes sense. Most logic these days is implemented in PALs (which are covered) or larger-scale devices. 7400-level devices have pretty much gone the way of relays and tubes - of historical interest, mostly. Remember that this is "Contemporary" logic, and those aren't big concerns in the daily work of most contemporary logic designers.

There are other omissions that make sense for a first-term course. Hardware description languages (e.g. Verilog or VHDL) are barely mentioned; they're critical in daily practice, but may not be useful until students have mastered this book's level. Micro-sequencers might also be a bit advanced for this presentation, despite their usefulness and their conceptual importance in later courses. More complex design examples would have helped, but would probably have started making bad assumptions about tools available to the student. Sticking to simple problems, however, may not prepare the student for systems of realistic complexity. Some of the omissions really don't do the student any favors. When logic design is so separate from other kinds of circuit design, students come away with a critical lack of understanding of how logic fits into a whole system. There's just no mention of signal integrity, drive strength, power consumption, jitter and skew, interfacing, or all the points where logic hits the rest of the world. Nothing in this book prepares a student for reading a standard spec sheet, let alone reading between its lines. I can only hope that instructors using this book make up for some of those deficiencies in supplementary material or in the lab.

The authors have chosen a range of topics to cover, and have covered it with workman-like competence. It's good as far as it goes. My only problem is that it doesn't go into the second semester, into the underlying technology (or not much), or very far into the real world.

//wiredweird

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is timeless, October 1, 1997

By	John J. Rinck (Hollister, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Contemporary Logic Design (Hardcover)

When I was going to school at Berkeley I took Mr. Katz's course in logic design (CS150). This book was only in manuscript form at the time, but I found it easy to read and very practical. Now four years out of school, and immersed in the field, I find myself still referring back to it from time to time. That is the mark of a great textbook.