Greetings

This course is intended for future experimentalists. The goal of this course is to bring to the student a sufficient enough familiarization with digital circuits, logic, and programmable logic so that the student can actually build instruments for experiments. The course is not intended for those who are curious about Boolean algebra, or FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), but don't necessarily plan to use this knowledge. I'd really like this to be as pragmatic a course as possible. Of course, being a professor, I am sure that I will not be able to resist temptations to be pedantic, but I'll try to control myself. I also warn you that I will be exceedingly informal, and that I may appear disorganized. Well, in fact, I probably am somewhat disorganized because this is the first time that this course will be taught, and even though I have a general outline, I will have to make up the syllabus as I go along, more or less. You can consider this course to be experimental, but since you are all going to be experimentalists, this should not be a problem! :)

• Course Meetings:
  • The first order of business will be to figure out if there's a better time to meet. Many people want to take this course have conflicts, and since we are going to be informal, we might as well consider what would be a good time to meet so that as many people as possible can take the course.
  • Official meeting time is M, W 2-3:20pm in 1304
  • For the first few weeks, we'll just meet on Wed, and if we need to, we will also meet on Mon at 2-3:20pm. But we'll see how that goes. I'm hoping that towards the end of the course it's more independent labs.
• Requirements
  • A brain
  • Appreciation for technology and what you can actually do rather quickly and effectively to build instruments
  • Laptop running XP. This is because we will be loading up software for the labs
  • Altera (corporation) DE2 development board. All experimentalist students who are already in a research group should request from their advisor that this board be purchased for them. The cost from Altera is $250, and trust me they are NOT making a profit!
  • How to spell Wikipedia
• Textbooks
  • Wikipedia
  • TBD (there are some texts but probably not for the few few lectures. Wikipedia is much better)
• TAs
  • You will be the TA
• Communication
  • Always via email. Send me your email (drew@umd.edu). If you don't send me your email and you don't get any information, your fault.
• Homework
  • I'll will let you know via email where the assignments are and when they will be due...
• Exams
  • Only if you insist
• Grade
  • Show up, take notes, pay attention, do the lab(s), you get an A. Otherwise, I have no idea.
• Course materials
  • This is important. I will post everything hanging off of this page. You will need to check things here to stay up on stuff.

   

Course Materials

• Overview of digital logic/programming logic for large HEP experiment (ppt pdf)
• Rules for Karnaugh maps
• Homework assignment 1. Due when all of the relevant material has been covered.
• Verilog tutorials:
  • http://www.asic-world.com/verilog/verilog_one_day.html
  • http://www.doe.carleton.ca/~shams/97350/PetervrlK.pdf
  • And of source, google "verilog tutorial"
• DE2 Development kit user manual
• Verilog files:
  • Drive a 7-segment led display: display_digit.v
  • A "poor man's" pulse width modulator: pwm.v (actually, this uses 4 of the toggle switches to define a number and varies the pulse width according to that number, it doesn't actually "modulate" the width)