Demonstrating the process of designing computing devices to pupils

Abstract

It is useful for a teacher to have in his arsenal complex practical assignments (projects) that require the use of knowledge from several parts of the course being studied. The article develops such a project in detail: it proposes to pass through the main stages of designing one of the most important computer devices — an adder. During the project, students will need to apply their knowledge of constructing a truth table corresponding to the problem, replacing it with an equivalent logical formula, transforming it using Boolean algebra, and finally, obtaining a practical scheme of a device on logical elements. If you have the opportunity and desire, you can even assemble this circuit (for example, on the Arduino platform) and see how it works. There is also a "light" variant: to write a program that simulates the work of an adder or use the ready simulator proposed by the authors.

The article contains some additional information on the topic: the concept of HDL (Hardware Description Language) for logic circuit description, ideas about the completeness of the system from logical operations and its influence on the range of manufactured microcircuits, information about the construction of a multi-bit adder and ways to speed up the execution of an essentially sequential addition operation, general ideas for constructing an ALU (arithmetic logic unit) of a modern processor. All material is presented at a level accessible to schoolchildren.

The project has a clear career-oriented focus: during their work, students gain some understanding of the main stages of computer device development.