Digital System Engineering

Introduction to the Digital Systems

Dr. Amer AlGhadhban

Week 1
Lectures # 01

University of Hail
1 Sep. 2019

Digital System Engineering Slide 1

 Outline
• Introduction
• History of Digital Systems
• Moore’s law and Integrated Circuits evolution
• Introduction to digital computer system
• Basic architecture of Microcomputer

Slide 2
 Digital Systems
• Digital systems are devices designed to
save, process, generate and/or communicate
information in digital format; mainly binary.
• Examples: computers, mobile phones,
tablets, calculators, satellite receivers …
 DS Main Components
• RAM random access memory
– Temporary storage
– it is lost when power is removed
– 1Mbyte (8086) -> 8GByte (i7)
• ROM read-only memory
– Permanently storage
– it isn’t lost when power is removed
– Computer BIOS settings are stored in ROM
• CPU central processing unit
– Process/compute instructions from OS
Modern Semiconductor Devices for Integrated Circuits (C. Hu) Slide 7-4
 Microcontroller (µC)
• Integrated electronic computing device on a single chip:
Integrated Circuits (IC).
• It contains a processor core, programmable ROM, RAM and
I/O pins dedicated to perform various tasks.
• It does not need any external circuits to do its task
– microcontrollers are heavily used in embedded systems

Modern Semiconductor Devices for Integrated Circuits (C. Hu) Slide 7-5
Arduino microcontroller

Modern Semiconductor Devices for Integrated Circuits (C. Hu) Slide 7-6
 Microprocessor
• Microprocessor has only a CPU inside them in one or few
chips IC.
• It does not have RAM, ROM and other peripherals.
• It is dependent on external circuits of peripherals to work.
• Microprocessor is made for complex tasks like
development of software’s, games and other applications.
– Needs high processing capacity and large RAM.

Modern Semiconductor Devices for Integrated Circuits (C. Hu) Slide 7-7
 µP vs µC
• Microcontroller has RAM, ROM, EEPROM embedded in it while we have to
use external circuits in case of microprocessors.
• Microcontroller is compact on a single chip while microprocessor is bulky.
• Microcontroller uses cheap components and needs lesser external components.
Therefore, it is far cheaper than microprocessors.
• Microcontroller has low processing speed (about 8 MHz to 50 MHz), but
microprocessors is above 1 GHz.
• Microcontrollers have power saving system , like idle mode or power saving
mode so overall it uses less power. While in microprocessors generally there is
no power saving system and many external components are used with it, so its
power consumption is high.
• Microcontroller is preferred to less complex tasks. Microprocessor is used for
software development, game development, website, documents making etc.

[Link] Slide 7-8

microprocessor-and-microcontroller
 System on Chip (SoC)
• A system on a chip (SoC) is a digital system that integrates all the necessary
electronic components for that system onto a single IC “chip”. These
components include a microprocessor (CPU), graphical processing unit
(GPU), RAM, ROM, I/O pins and secondary storage. Also, it may
contain digital to analog converter, mixed-signal, antennas, network interface
card, such as ethernet or wifi, depending on the application.
– Since, the SoC components are integrated onto a single substrate, SoC
needs much less area and consumes less power than a nonintegrated multi-
chips system that performs same functionality.
– SoCs are commonly used in embedded systems, the Internet of Things
(IoTs), edge computing and mobile computing like smartphone
– The nonintegrated system has the flexibility to scale-out by externally
adding more powerful components or replace the existing ones.

[Link] Slide 7-9

SoC Raspberry PI

[Link] Slide 7-10

Digital System Engineering Slide 11
Slide 12
The Transistor Revolution

First transistor
Bell Labs,
1948

Digital System Engineering Slide 13

Transistor count
• The transistor count is the number
of transistors on an integrated circuit
(IC). Transistor count is the most common
measure of IC complexity, although there
are caveats.

Slide 14
Intel 4004 Micro-Processor

1971
1000 transistors
1 MHz operation

Digital System Engineering Slide 15

 8080
• 16-bit address bus (1974)
– Used in Altair computer
• (early hobbyist PC)
• Characteristics
– 6 m process
– 4500 transistors
– 2 MHz
– 8-bit word size
– 40-pin DIP package

Slide 16
 8086 / 8088

• 16-bit processor (1978-9)

– IBM PC and PC XT
– Revolutionary products
– Introduced x86 ISA
• Characteristics
– 3 m process
– 29k transistors
– 5-10 MHz
– 16-bit word size
– 40-pin DIP package
• Microcode ROM

Slide 17
 Pentium
• Superscalar (1993)
– 2 instructions per cycle
– Separate 8KB I$ & D$
• Characteristics
– 0.8-0.35 m process
– 3.2M transistors
– 60-300 MHz
– 32-bit word size
– 296-pin PGA
• Caches, datapath,
FPU, control

Slide 18
 Pentium Pro / II / III
• Dynamic execution (1995-9)
– 3 micro-ops / cycle
– Out of order execution
– 16-32 KB
– Multimedia instructions
– PIII adds 256+ KB L2$
• Characteristics
– 0.6-0.18 m process
– 5.5M-28M transistors
– 166-1000 MHz
– 32-bit word size

Slide 19
Intel Pentium (IV) microprocessor

2000
42 Million transistors
1.5 GHz operation

Digital System Engineering Slide 20

 Pentium 4
– Introduction date: November
20, 2000
• 1.4 GHz clock
• fabricated in 180 nm process,
• 42M transistors
– In 2002 (2 GHz in 130 nm,
55M transistors)
– In 2005 (3.8 GHz in 90 nm,
125M transistors)
– Typical Use: Desktops and
entry-level workstations

Slide 21
Supercomputer for Sony's PlayStation 3

• IBM chip has

nine processor
cores
• 192 billion
floating-point
operations per
second (192 G)
• Typical Use:
multimedia

Slide 22
 Other chips
Fujitsu 68903 HP PA8000

from [Link]

Slide 23
Not Only Microprocessors
Cell Small
Signal RF
Power
RF

Phone
Power
Management

Analog
Digital Cellular Market Baseband
(Phones Shipped) Digital Baseband
(DSP + MCU)
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
Units 48M 86M 162M 260M 435M

iPhone XS → 6.9 Billion Transistors

7 nm Process technology
2.4 GHz

Digital System Engineering Slide 24

Moore’s Law

 In 1965, Gordon Moore noted that the

number of transistors on a chip doubled
every 18 to 24 months.
 He made a prediction that
semiconductor technology will double its
effectiveness every 18 months

Digital System Engineering Slide 25

Slide 26
Transistor Counts 6.9 Billion
Transistors
2X growth in 1.96 years! 1 Billion
K Transistors
1,000,000

100,000
Pentium® III
10,000 Pentium® II
Pentium® Pro
1,000 Pentium®
i486
100 i386
80286
10 8086
Source: Intel
1
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2018
Projected
Digital System Engineering Slide 27
Frequency
10000
Doubles every
1000
2 years
Frequency (Mhz)

P6
100
Pentium ® proc
486
10 8085 386
8086 286

1 8080
8008
4004
0.1
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Year
Lead Microprocessors frequency doubles every 2 years

Digital System Engineering Slide 28

Power Dissipation
100

P6
Pentium ® proc
Power (Watts)

10
486
8086 286
386
8085
1 8080
8008
4004

0.1
1971 1974 1978 1985 1992 2000
Year

Lead Microprocessors power continues to increase

Digital System Engineering Slide 29

Basic Architecture of a Microcomputer

Slide 30
Slide 31