Chapter 6 - Digital Circuits

Abstract

The great success story of digital electronics is due to one simple fact: information can be reduced to a stream of binary data, which can be represented as one of two discrete voltage levels. These data can be manipulated and processed at will, and the quantity of information you can process depends only on the speed at which you can do it. The infinite variability of analogue voltage levels is replaced by two dimensions of quantization, in voltage and time. In theory, all voltage levels below a given threshold represent binary 0, and all levels above the threshold represent binary 1. Again in theory, time is divided into discrete units by a reference clock, and the boundary between each unit marks the transition from 1bit of data to the next. This chapter discusses design issues with digital design, reviewing the key building blocks useful in circuit design and the advanced design issues relating to practical systems including timing, noise, power and ground effects, and implementation.