📜 Lecture 1: Introduction to Digital Engineering

This lecture provides a foundational overview of the course and the core concepts of digital systems.

Key Concepts

• Course Structure: Introduces the lecturers, credit hours, and grading distribution (Class work, Midterm, Final Exam).
• Importance of Digital Logic: Explains that electronic devices consist of Hardware (circuits) and Software (programs). This course, Digital Logic Design, focuses on how to design the hardware.
• Applications: Digital logic is the foundation for:
  • Computers (CPUs, busses)
  • Networking (Routers, modems)
  • Embedded Products (Cars, appliances, toys)
  • Entertainment (Gaming consoles, MP3 players)
• Analog vs. Digital Signals:
  • Analog: Signals that vary continuously over a range (e.g., a smooth sine wave).
  • Digital: Signals that can only assume discrete (discontinuous) values, typically two: 0 and 1. This provides greater accuracy.
• What is "Digital"?: A system based on distinguishing between just two values, 0s and 1s (also called off/on). All computer data is encoded this way.
• What is "Logic Design"?: The process of taking a problem specification and building a solution (a circuit) from available components, meeting criteria for cost, size, or power.
• Basic Building Blocks: The fundamental units used to build all digital circuits are Logic Gates.
• Logic Levels:
  • Logic 0 and 1 are physically represented by voltage ranges.
  • Example: Logic 0 might be 0V to 0.8V, and Logic 1 might be 2V to 5V. The area in between is an "intermediate region" crossed during transition.
• Fundamental Gates: The three basic operations are AND, OR, and NOT (INVERTER).
• Number Systems:
  • Decimal (Base 10): Digits 0-9.
  • Binary (Base 2): Digits 0 and 1.
  • Octal (Base 8): Digits 0-7.
  • Hexadecimal (Base 16): Digits 0-9 and letters A (10) to F (15).
• Number Conversions: The lecture provides examples for:
  • Decimal to Binary (repeatedly divide by 2)
  • Binary to Decimal (sum of powers of 2)
  • Decimal to Octal (divide by 8)
  • Octal to Decimal (sum of powers of 8)
  • Decimal to Hexadecimal (divide by 16)
  • Hexadecimal to Decimal (sum of powers of 16)