Customer Reviews

Digital Design: Principles and Practices Package (4th Edition)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is about the best book on Digital Design I've had in my hands. It was strongly recommended by our professor, and the whole class totally agreed after a few weeks.

It is complete since I had a class that was half a Digital Design course. I found every topics treated in a complete and detailed way.

It is useful, because in my opinion the included Xilinx Software alone worths the whole price. It is a powerful tool that lets you put in practice what you've learned from the book.

And it is as funny as a book on this subject can be ... one can learn it from the first pages. This helps taking the book in your hands even when studying is not exactly the funniest thing you could do.

The overall quality, hence, remains 5 stars from me even if ... printing errors have been sometime very annoying. I think the Updated Edition should be a good remedy to this drawback.

This book was the reason i enjoyed my undergrad logic design class (which used another [bad] textbook): this is a strong book with strong explanations, thinking reasonings, nice examples, thorough VHDL and Verilog sections, lots of 'real-world' information. The author is precise, logical, goes deep but very straightforward, and funny (!). Where our textbook had gabs, where my professor's lectures were vague, where all other explanations seemed cheesy to me - Wakerly just filled me up.

Some may disagree with MY statements because they are merely...just STUdents. I had this text as a student and have found it to be helpful in understanding Logic Design. I agree that the jokes were CORNY. However, the depth of material provided by Mr. Wakerly are excellent. Not many text discuss and provide timing diagrams and how such diagrams relate to the device. The concept of timing analysis and diagrams are far more important than the design methodology, besides Wakerly also does highlight the design process better than other text I have read. The only problem is that he does not state whether it is an example or not. I have used this text in class and at work, and I have found it a VALUABLE REFERENCE MATERIAL. I have used it several times as reference in CPLD and Logic Design.

If you believe any negative comments, I suggest that you try borrowing the second edition and skim through it...I WAS WORTH THE DOLLAR AMOUNT. Besides, a novice/student may not even know the difference since one is fairly new to the trade!

I am a CS guy too, and this book was required for the Digital Logic class. I love this book, cause it doesn't have any pre-reqs, and so anyone with an interest can pick it up and will have a good idea as to what digital circuits are all about.

I'm sure that chapter 3, which deals with the analog circuitory isn't very amazing to CS guys, but my prof. insisted on learning that chapter, and I'm happy he did. We all cursed him for teaching us transistors and CMOS logic, but it was well worth it, and I'm happy Wakerly has included it in this book. All you have to do is read every word in Chapter 3, and you'll have a great idea.

The scope of this book is excellent. Taking you from Binary numbers to RAM in one book is quite an achievement and it just flows. Also a good source to pick up VHDL. The diagrams are very clear and easy to understand.

After reading through 3/4ths of this book, I was able to design a few components(different design) by myself without any help.

I would recommend this book highly..And if you're CS, please don't think of Chapter 3 as a waste and skip it.. Cause if you want to get a better understanding and feel for things..you Better read it..I'm happy I was forced to.

It is not an easy task to write a book that guides the reader from the very basic knowledge to the understanding the advanced problems of digital design and to keep the reader not to get it off for many hours. This book shows it is possible. It covers all that is necessary to master the digital design and contains answers to many questions that are usually not discussed in other similar books - e.g. why a latch and not a flipflop is used to store address in a microcomputer, and a lot of others. The ABEL and VHDL languages that are explained here help the reader to keep up with the modern design tools. Many examples illustrate the theoretical exposition that is (up to several minor exceptions) clear and comprehensible. I think it is the best book I have ever read in this field.

Inspite of some reviewers' opinion, I have read the 4th edition again with great pleasure, the comment boxes first. Previously, I tried several books to learn Verilog because I felt it as a gap in my knowledge of HDLs - ABEL and VHDL am I using already for years. Wakerly's book is the first that, after reading it for a day or two, gave me feeling that I am able to write descriptions in Verilog nearly as well as in VHDL.

Of course, some objections can be made, no such book would avoid them - for example, a more up-to-date FPGA type could be chosen as representative for explanation of its principles, and the details of CLB interconnect are not just the most important information for a FPGA novice. When I made my first steps in this field, I gave a lot of time to this subject but without practical implications. Nevertheless, similar objections can only be raised to a minor part of the book. I am convinced that the clear, straightforward and many times enjoyable style of this book will more than compensate the reader. If it would be possible, I would give it four and half star, but, to avoid metastability, I prefer rather five than four.

I found this book REALLY GOOD for an introductory course in Digital Design. The author gave a lot of examples in both VHDL and ABEL, plus a lot of tips when designing digital systems. The whole book is a complete review of digital design principles. I recommend it for those who want to remember all the principles (gates, adders, combinational circuits, sequencial, etc), it's clear and complete.

As a recent EE graduate, I must say this text has been useful to me throughout my college career and on the job. The author describes logic gates and K-maps in a straightforward, humorous manner. Ok, so the jokes are corny...it is far too easy, however, to find other books that are too boring to read.

The book comes with good practical examples, points out caveats, and even covers "racing," an important, yet glossed over topic in other texts.

I highly recommend this text.

Excellent introductory text!!! My only negative comment is that chapter four (switching algebra) should be taught before the indepth look at digital circuits in chapter three. Other than that a fabulous introduction into the world of digital design.

This is an introductory digital design textbook. It starts out assuming that you know nothing of the subject and takes you through everything in a clear manner. This book covers common ICs and how they could be used as well as some more complex circuts such as RAMs, ROMs, and PLDs. I find it to be an invaluable refrence

I'm in my early 60's and I'm now back in school studying electronics engineering. This book was used in one of my first back to college classes in 38 years. I don't remember much math, but was able to understand the concepts in this book. Yes it's hard and condensed. I would like to see an idiot's version of Boolean Algebra that holds your hand more, but this book and my Professor got me through. Thanks Dr. Luca! For the first time in my life I now have a basic understanding of how a microprocessor and other digital logic electronic circuits work. Out of what I learned in this text, concepts were put into a patent application filed this summer. This invention would not have been as profound without having studied from this book. All from 1 semester of studying electronics engineering. I have much to learn, including computer programming as used in this book, such as the HDL languages. This book includes 3 versions of HDL's: ABEL, VHDL, and Verilog. You can pick and choose. We used VHDL in my class. For electronics engineering students with math and programming experience, this book should be great. When I first went to college, everyone used slide rules! There were no personal computers. You learned Fortran on a main frame and hoped you did not make a mistake and have a tractor drive printer turn your $50.00 box of perf paper into nonsense within a few minutes. $50.00 was a lot of money to a poor student then. The minimum wage was $1.25! But I learned a lot as a beginner with this book. Cool jokes in the book. Had fun in digital and even designed a vacuum tube into a digital circuit. I had to explain what a tube is to the lab instructor. Several professors thought that was cool. A senior professor, head of graduate electronics engineering, really lit up when I told him about the tube. He said, when I was a graduate student, the faculty built a digital computer using tubes and I got to program it! Had a great time! For those interested, the tube was a directly heated, subminiature pentode with a filament voltage of 1.25 and a plate voltage of 15 volts. It was stuck into a clock line just for a reason to be there. The circuit would quit without the tube. Fun!! For fun, it would be neat to find out if John Wakerly knows what a tube is!