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CS 315-01 Lecture/Lab — Meeting Summary (Fall 2025)

Date: October 21, 2025
Time: 08:14 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Meeting ID: 886 4953 2573

Quick Recap

The session covered foundational concepts in digital logic circuits—both combinational and sequential—with a focus on gates, wires, splitters, and circuit design techniques. Greg introduced core components such as comparators and multiplexers (MUXs), demonstrating how to implement and abstract them to build larger systems. The class is progressing toward a 32-bit instruction word analyzer for Project 5, which will extend into Project 6: building a processor.

Next Steps

  • Students will complete Project 5 by building a circuit that analyzes machine code and counts different instruction types.
  • Students will implement some components from scratch and use specified built-in components from the Digital tool as required by Project 5.
  • Students will ensure clear, consistent wire layout and circuit organization for readability.
  • Greg will share additional links and resources for Project 5.
  • Students experiencing AutoGrader issues should attend Greg’s office hours today.

Summary

Digital Logic Circuits Overview

  • Focus on combinational and sequential logic, including:
  • Fundamentals of gates, wires, and splitters.
  • Combinational circuit design and the sum-of-products technique.
  • Ripple-carry adder design.
  • Emphasis on modular design:
  • Treating circuits as reusable components.
  • Controlling component appearance within the Digital design tool.
  • Comparator design progression:
  • From a 1-bit comparator to 2-bit and 8-bit versions using abstraction and bus splitting.
  • Ongoing project work:
  • Building a 32-bit instruction word analyzer for Project 5 to count instruction types.
  • Quality standards:
  • Emphasis on good “code” quality in circuit design, including consistent formatting and clean organization.

Digital Circuits and Logic Design

  • Key components:
  • Implementation and role of comparators and multiplexers (MUXs) in larger designs.
  • Project trajectory:
  • Transition from building components from scratch to leveraging Digital’s built-in components in Project 5.
  • Lead-in to Project 6: constructing a processor.
  • Introduction to sequential logic:
  • Extending combinational logic with state and a clock signal to enable computation over time.
  • Overview of building a 1-bit register and the steps toward a 64-bit register (to be detailed in the next lab).