Project-Oriented Approach to Low-Power Topics in Advanced Digital Design Course

摘要

Project-oriented approach to learning of digital design refers to any learning environment in which the problem drives the learning, because it is posed in such a way that students realize they need to acquire new knowledge before the problem can be solved [1]. We consider a problem of low-power synthesis of digital systems, which are described as a Finite State Machine (FSM). FSM is a widely recognized model used in digital system design. Our approach to digital design is based on an FSM decomposition that is one of the most important problems in discrete device synthesis. FSM decomposition is an essential topic for digital design education at Tallinn University of Technology (TUT). Decomposition problem is a task of substituting prototype FSM with a network of interconnected sub-FSMs, which has the same terminal behavior. A FSM can be decomposed into smaller interacting machines in order to archive different optimizations. In this paper, we apply decomposition technique (as a case study) to organize the network as a collection of alternatively working components, thus greatly reducing the switching activity of the circuit (dynamic power management).