Customer Reviews

Digital Systems Design with FPGAs and CPLDs

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As it is stated on the back cover, if you are just getting started in the field of digital sytems design with programmable logic, this book is definitely for you. Provides an easy to read, easy to follow, and easy to learn way of introducing this field to students.

As was mentioned in the previous review, this book does touch on many different subjects, giving the reader a good taste of the various topics that should be understood. I like how the author introduced programmable logic in general in the first chapter and moved on to the necessary topics a student must learn to be an efficient digital designer; topics including truth tables, boolean algebra, k-maps, to name a few.

The author also provied a very good chapter on digital signal processing (DSP), which is not often found in introductory digital design books being that it is a whole animal in itself. Also, very good coverage on VHDL and Testbenches. All of the code is provided for you on the companion website to download and use in your own projects/designs, as well as other useful information.

Buy it and with it, begin your collection as you jump into the wonderful world of digital design.

This book gives an all-round introduction to system design with programmable devices, including a number of topics not directly related to design with FPGAs and CPLDs. A great number of topics are covered, all the way from PCB design, different programmable devices and hardware languages, DSP design and over to high-level software languages. The different topics in the book are kept on an introduction level, with the largest sole chapter and effort placed on an introduction to VHDL.

The VHDL introduction can be used for beginners, in order to get the very first taste of what VHDL is all about. The chapter presents VHDL constructions that can be used to implement primitive functions like registers, latches, ROM and RAM. VHDL code for some smaller designs is included as examples. The basic methods for testbench design are also shown. Afterwards, it may be easier to read and understand books that go into more details, like Peter J. Ashendens "The Designer's Guide to VHDL".

Overall, the book serves as an introduction to a great number of different digital systems design topics, with focus on only a few topics. The book may serve as an introduction textbook for students, but the reader should expect to use other books in order to go into details on specific topics.

I'm probably not the exact target for this book, and perhaps that's why it gets only 4 out of 5 stars from me.

If you've got a background in digital electronics, and want to focus on CPLDs and FPGAs, there are plenty of other books that focus solely on that topic (such as Newnes FPGAs Ebook Collection (Newnes Ultimate CDs)). From the title, that's what I was expecting. But the book offers a whole lot more. If you're a student, this is a great thing, because this book will expose you to a lot of subjects somewhat shallowly, and a few subjects throughly and superbly.

Topics include system design, PCB design, Digital Signal Processing basics (perhaps the best chapter in my opinion), introduction to VHDL (this chapter clocks in at over 140pp!), and analog/digital interfacing. Everything you'd expect in an introductory digital systems textbook is here. The language is clear, and there are plenty of bullet lists that make it easy to cover ground and absorb material quickly.

But here's my only ding on the book: lack of focus. Show me another book that talks about transistor-level design, PHP, UML, Perl, PCB fabrication, FPGA logic cells, CMOS, antifuses, Visual Basic, FCC markings, IIR filters and Gajski-Kuhn charts. It seems that the author is almost trying to cover too much material.

Still, the book is hefty, filled with good information, it's typeset well, and the fonts are easy to read. There is at least one picture per page (one of my criteria for a good technical book), there are good questions at the end of each chapter, and there are good references at the end of the book.