Students learn fundamentals of digital computer system design and description in a hardware description language, while being trained for digital design, verification and programming of computer systems.

After taking this subject students should be able to: design digital systems made of combinational circuits, sequential circuits and finite state machines, design computation structures, processors and their control units, describe the computer system in a hardware description language, program the computer system in the assembly language, translate the program written in a high-level programming language into the assembly and binary code and design the memory and input-output subsystem of the computer system at the basic level.

Number representation in computer systems. Digital abstraction. CMOS implementation of logic circuits. Standard combinational and sequential circuits. VHDL description of digital systems. Timing characteristics of digital systems. VHDL description of the finite state machines. Minimization of finite state machines. Pipeline in digital systems. Computation structures. Design of control units. Design of the instruction set and implementation of the central processing unit. Assembly language: basic operations, support for branches, loops and procedures. Fundamentals of the design of assemblers and compilers. Memory hierarchy: cache memory, virtual memory. Peripheral units, interrupts and exceptions. Implementation of the central processing unit with pipeline. Pipeline hazards: data hazards, control hazards.

Lectures. Computer laboratory exercises. Tutorials for tests and exams. Office hours. Optional laboratory activities and projects.