inst.eecs.berkeley.

edu/~cs61c
CS61C : Machine Structures
Lecture 25
Introduction to Synchronous Digital Systems
(SDS) Switches, Transistors, Gates

Teaching Professor Dan Garcia SIGGRAPH 2010

July 27th, 2:00 pm, Theater 411
Greg James
Barry Silverman
Brian Silverman

www.cs.berkeley.edu/~ddgarcia
SIGGRAPH 2010
July 27th, 2:00 pm, Theater 411
Greg James
Barry Silverman
Brian Silverman

Reverse Engineering the 6502: “we exposed the silicon die, photographed its
surface at high resolution and also photographed its substrate…. we created …
models of each of the chip's physical components…complete digital model and
transistor-level simulation of the chip…This model is very accurate and can run
classic 6502 programs, including Atari games!”
http://visual6502.org/JSSim/expert.html

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What is Machine Structures?

Application (Chrome)
Operating
Compiler System 61C
Assembler (MacOS X)
Software
Instruction Set
Hardware Architecture
Processor Memory I/O system
Datapath & Control
Digital Design
Circuit Design
transistors

Coordination of many levels of abstraction

ISA is an important abstraction level:
contract between HW & SW
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 New-School Machine Structures
(It’s a bit more complicated!)
Software Hardware
• Parallel Requests
Assigned to computer Warehouse Smart
Scale Phone
e.g., Search “Garcia” Computer
Harness
• Parallel Threads Parallelism &
Assigned to core Achieve High
e.g., Lookup, Ads Performance Computer
• Parallel Instructions Core … Core
>1 instruction @ one time Memory (Cache)
e.g., 5 pipelined instructions
Input/Output
• Parallel Data Core
Instruction Unit(s) Functional
>1 data item @ one time
Unit(s)
e.g., Add of 4 pairs of words
A0+B0A1+B1A2+B2A3+B3
• Hardware descriptions
Main Memory
All gates @ one time
Logic Gates
Today’s Lecture
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 Levels of Representation/Interpretation
High Level Language temp = v[k];
v[k] = v[k+1];
Program (e.g., C) v[k+1] = temp;
Compiler lw t0, 0(x2) Anything can be represented
Assembly Language lw t1, 4(x2)
as a number,
Program (e.g., RISC-V) sw t1, 0(x2)
sw t0, 4(x2) i.e., data or instructions
Assembler
0000 1001 1100 0110 1010 1111 0101 1000
Machine Language 1010 1111 0101 1000 0000 1001 1100 0110
Program (RISC-V) 1100 0110 1010 1111 0101 1000 0000 1001
0101 1000 0000 1001 1100 0110 1010 1111
Machine
Interpretation
Hardware Architecture Description
(e.g., block diagrams)
Architecture
Implementation
Logic Circuit Description
(Circuit Schematic Diagrams)

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 Synchronous Digital Systems

Hardware of a processor, such as the RISC-V, is

an example of a Synchronous Digital System
Synchronous:
• All operations coordinated by a central clock
▪ “Heartbeat” of the system!

Digital:
• All values represented by discrete values
• Electrical signals are treated as 1s and 0s;
grouped together to form words

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 Logic Design
• Next several weeks: we’ll study how a modern
processor is built; starting with basic elements
as building blocks
• Why study hardware design?
– Understand capabilities and limitations of hw in
general and processors in particular
– What processors can do fast and what they can’t do
fast
(avoid slow things if you want your code to run fast!)
– Background for more in depth hw courses (CS 150,
CS 152)
– There is just so much you can do with standard
processors: you may need to design own custom hw
for extra performance
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 Switches: Basic Element of Physical Implementations

• Implementing a simple circuit

(arrow shows action if wire changes to “1”):
A Z
Close switch (if A is “1” or asserted)
and turn on light bulb (Z)

Z
A
Open switch (if A is “0” or unasserted)
and turn off light bulb (Z)

Z  A
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 Switches (cont’d)

• Compose switches into more complex ones

(Boolean functions):
A B

AND Z  A and B

OR Z  A or B

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 Historical Note
• Early computer designers built ad hoc
circuits from switches
• Began to notice common patterns in their
work: ANDs, ORs, …
• Master’s thesis (by Claude Shannon)
made link between work and 19th Century
Mathematician George Boole
– Called it “Boolean” in his honor
• Could apply math to give theory to
hardware design, minimization, …

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Transistor Networks

• Modern digital systems designed in CMOS

– MOS: Metal-Oxide on Semiconductor
– C for complementary

• MOS transistors act as voltage-controlled

switches

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 http://youtu.be/ZaBLiciesOU
MOS Transistors

• Three terminals: Drain, Gate, and Source

– Switch action:
if voltage on gate terminal is (some amount) higher/lower
than source terminal then conducting path established
between drain and source terminals
To remember: G G
n (“normal”)
p (has a circle,
like the top S D S D
part of P itself)
n-channel p-channel
open when voltage at G is low closed when voltage at G is low
closes when: opens when:
voltage(G) > voltage (S) +  voltage(G) < voltage (S) – 

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MOS Networks

X what is the
relationship
“1” between x and y?
(voltage 3v x y
source)
Y 0 volts 3 volts

0v 3 volts 0 volts

“0” (ground)

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Transistor Circuit Rep. vs. Block diagram
• Chips are composed of nothing but
transistors and wires.
• Small groups of transistors form useful
building blocks.
“1” (voltage source)
a b c
0 0 1
0 1 1
1 0 1
1 1 0
“0” (ground)
• Block are organized in a hierarchy to build
higher-level blocks: ex: adders.
(You can build AND, OR, NOT out of NAND!)
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Signals and Waveforms: Clocks

• Signals
• When digital is only treated as 1 or 0
• Is transmitted over wires continuously
• Transmission is effectively instant
- Implies that any wire only contains 1 value
at a time
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Signals and Waveforms
an-1 an-1 a0

Delay!
Noisy!

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Signals and Waveforms: Grouping

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Signals and Waveforms: Circuit Delay

2 3 4 5

3 10 0 1

5 13 4 6

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Type of Circuits

• Synchronous Digital Systems are made

up of two basic types of circuits:
• Combinational Logic (CL) circuits
• Our previous adder circuit is an example.
• Output is a function of the inputs only.
• Similar to a pure function in mathematics,
y = f(x). (No way to store information from
one invocation to the next. No side
effects)
• State Elements: circuits that store
information.
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Circuits with STATE (e.g., register)

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And in conclusion…
• ISA is very important abstraction layer
• Contract between HW and SW
• Clocks control pulse of our circuits
• Voltages are analog, quantized to 0/1
• Circuit delays are fact of life
• Two types of circuits:
• Stateless Combinational Logic (&,|,~)
• State circuits (e.g., registers)

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