Design Projects

In contrast to assignments, design projects require the students to solve and optimize a design problem, given only a set of specifications and goals. They require a combination of both manual analysis and extensive tool usage. The authors believe that these projects are the best possible way of learning the material offered in the text book in-depth. All the projects on this page have been class-tested. To help planning, we have indicated the primary focus of each project.

• Optimizing an Inverter Chain ― Chapter 5 (Inverter Chains)
  • Minimizing energy for bounded extra delay
  • Minimizing delay penalty for a given energy reduction
• Clock Driver ―Chapter 5 (Inverter Chains); (also related to Ch. 9 and 10)
• Random Number Generator ― Chapter 7 (Sequential) (also related to Ch. 10)
• Viterbi Decoder ― Chapter 11 (Arithmetic) (also related to Ch. 6 and 7)
• Divider ― Chapter 11 (Arithmetic) also related to Ch. 6 and 7)
  • Some background information on divider design
• 32-bit Arithmetic Logic Unit ― Chapter 11 (Arithmetic) also related to Ch. 6 and 7)
• 512 Word Content Addressable Memory ― Chapter 12 (Memory) (also related to Chapter 6)