Microprocessor Systems Design. Vol. II: Microcoding, Array Logic and

ELECTRONICS & POWER OCTOBER 1982

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Book Reviews Industrial electronics — a text-lab microprocessor-based systems are very important and could have been covered manual adequately at a level comparable with P.B.Zbar the rest of the book. McGraw-Hill, 1981, 278pp. £9-25 There are a number of industrial elec-

There continues to be a proliferation of new and revised texts in almost every area of electronics. This can be attributed to the following: •

tronics modules which have been omitted and perhaps should have displaced others included in the book, such as the discrete component multivibrator and monostable. Perhaps the most obvious omission is material on operational amplifiers. Other omissions include, switchmode circuits such as basic inverters and power supplies. All of these can be treated at the technician level and simple forms can be set up as experiments to demonstrate the basic principles. A. CANTON I

The need to cover a range of aspects, from devices to systems. The need to present the material for a wide range of levels, from hobbyist to professional engineer. The microelectronics explosion, which continues to produce new and better devices and makes feasible an ever increasing range of new systems. Not least, there continue to be significant differences in the preferences of individual instructors for the organisation and presentation of material.

Computer system architecture (2nd edition) M. Morris Mano Prentice Hall, 1982, 531pp. £22-40

In view of the above there is a genuine difficulty in producing a balanced text even if the objectives are clearly identified by an author. Therefore, some criticism is inevitable and 'industrial electronics — a text-lab manual', by P.B. Zbar is no exception. While the sub-title may lead one to believe that the book contains a significant component of text material, the fact is that the book borders on being a straightout laboratory manual. The 39 experiments set out in the book are.for the most part well thought out. Each experiment has a set of self-test questions which are to be attempted before and after the experiment. If this procedure is taken seriously, the self-test questions should prove to be quite effective. The book is aimed at the training of technicians and therefore quite rightly assumes only a modest level of knowledge of circuit theory, electrical machine theory, switching logic theory and mathematics. Nevertheless, the explanation given in the introductory section, which one assumes is the text component, is not too compromised and reasonably accurate. However, the more inquiring student is likely to require much more information than is provided in the book and overall the book is a little light on the text component. Almost certainly, a qualified engineer would find the introductory sections lacking in depth and most of the experiments too superficial in their objectives. The book is a third edition, revised to include changes in industrial electronics technology. The inclusion of new chapters or microprocessors is essential. New material on optoelectronics is also a worthwhile addition but in view of some of the omissions a little less space could have-been allocated to this area. The material on microprocessors does not include much information on buses and bus timing. These aspects of

In recent years there has been a proliferation of books on computers and microcomputers which are based on a particular architecture. It is therefore useful to have one which presents the fundamentals of computer design in a general way, only referring to specific designs for illustrative and comparative purposes. The selection and presentation of material in the book is good and I have found the first edition a useful text for courses on computer systems for a number of years. In this second edition the opportunity has been taken to revise some aspects and completely rewrite two of the chapters. The result is a significantly more useful coverage of the subject. The aspect ratio of the pages has been changed, making the book much easier to read. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce logic elements, design techniques and the basic logic building blocks of computers. It could be argued that this material could have been left out, but I feel that for this book it is useful to have it included. Data types are introduced in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 presents the important concepts of register transfer and microoperations. This is followed by two chapters in which the hardware and software aspects of a basic computer are covered. Chapters 7 to 12 are used to look at functional units of a computer in greater detail. Major emphasis is given to central processor organisation and microprogram control with a useful chapter on arithmetic algorithms. One of the rewritten chapters is on input-output organisation. This now gives a very good survey of the various techniques and protocols used for data transfer and includes an introduction to multiprocessors. Various aspects of memory organisation and management are covered in the last chapter. This is not a book for the design

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engineer, as topics are not covered in sufficient depth, but is an excellent text for first courses on computer architecture. Unfortunately at its current price it is difficult to recommend it to students. A soft cover edition at about half the price would be welcome. D.E.HYNDMAN

Microprocessor systems design. Vol II Microcoding, array logic and architectural design Edwin E. Klingman Prentice Hall, 1982, 34pp. £22-00 It is easy to see, from even a cursory glance around the shelves in the engineering section of a bookshop, that the present explosion in microprocessor technology has been accompanied by an equally prolific publishing effort. The volume reviewed here, which deals with bit slice, programmed logic design rather than general all-purpose computer architecture, is exceptional for two reasons. First, the book addresses itself to architectural design techniques rather than the assembly of a system as dictated by the constraints of a particular manufacturer's family of microprocessor chips. The basic theory of state machines and array logic is clearly described and a detailed review of several practical data processing elements (AMD2901/3, 3002, 74s481) is given. There is particular emphasis on the development of an array logic formalism and its application to PAL/PLAs, array logic, VLSI stick diagrams and the various facets of TTL design with LSI components and NMOS desiqn of silicon circuits. Secondly, this book clearly recognises that a general-purpose computer is most easily implemented with the recently 16/32 bit super microprocessor systems. These generally have the appropriate architectural features and will certainly have a large amount of readily available, software support. The author consequently concentrated on showing how bit-sliced microprogrammed design is primarily suited to the realisation of special-purpose architecture. Detailed design examples are presented of a two dimensional image filter, a floating point computation system and a two dimensional image encoding and decoding system. One minor criticism is that the implementation of a microprogrammed system for the direct execution of a highlevel language is not covered —this is a potentially important application and one that would have counterbalanced the rather computationally intensive examples presented. In summary this is a lucid, useful and practical contribution to the literature of microprogrammed computer architecture and it will be a valuable acquisition to the digital designer's library D.SINCLAIR