The course instructor is Dean Brock. The course lectures will be delivered on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10:10 PM to 11:00 AM in Ramsey 011. Lectures will be recorded and stored on servers located at NCSU and at UNCA for student review. You will need to use your NCSU account to access the NCSU ECE 212 video archive. The UNCA copy of the lectures can be accessed through the ENGR/ECE 212 lecture page. Due to the low data transfer rates of the UNCA network, you should only access the UNCA copy from on campus.
At UNCA the section number for this course is ENGR 212.D01. At NCSU the course has section numbers ECE 212-602 and ECE 212-603. (I have no idea what there are two different section numbers.) This course is being taught in two NCSU on-campus sections, 001 and 002.
The on-campus NCSU sections have very similar homework assignments, lecture topics, textbook coverage, and grading policies. The Asheville section will confirm to the Raleigh setions as much as possible. In fact, most of the following sections of this syllabus were copied verbatim from the syllabi for the Raleigh sections.
Technically the course prerequisite is an introductory programming course and introductory computer organization course using Patt and Patel's Introduction to Computing Systems: From Bits and Gates to C and Beyond as a text. If you are unsure about your preparations, please talk with the course instructor.
All class handouts, including homework assignments, can be found through the following URL:
This course covers the fundamentals of hardware design for digital systems. The goal is to cover the fundamentals of logic design, including:
You will be introduced to the fundamentals of logic design through a combination of lectures, conventional homework assignments, and "electronic" homework assignments.
The textbook for the course will be Digital Design Principles and Practices written by John F. Wakerly and published by Prentice-Hall (ISBN 0-13-089896-1 or 0-13-176059-9).
There will be three 50 minute in-class exams and a comprehensive final exam. No make-up exams will be given. If you have a conflict with a scheduled exam, you must notify me in advance to arrange an alternative. Likewise, if you are unable to take an exam due to illness or emergency, you must notify me immediately. Failure to notify prior to the exam time will result in a test grade of zero.
To conform with the UNCA final exam schedule, the final exam will be given from 9:30 to 12:30 on Friday, 16 May.
Assignments will be issued weekly (approximately) and will be due one week from the date of assignment. Though collaboration is sanctioned (and encouraged), direct copying is not. Realize that mastery of the material in the homework assignments will be essential for good performance in the exams. You may view the homework assignments and solutions, when posted, on the ENGR 212 homework index.
In general, homework solutions will be posted within a few hours of the homework due time. Homework turned in after the solution is posted will be returned ungraded. A significant penalty will be applied to homework turned in late but before the solution is posted.
Electronic homework assignments are laboratory assignments you implement on your own at home. This will involve designing and building combinational and sequential logic circuits on a breadboard or designing combinational and sequential circuits using ABEL or VHDL. There are three electronic homework assignments.
Your grade will be based upon:
| three semester exams | 40% |
| final exam | 30% |
| homework | 20% |
| electronic homework | 10% |
The +/- system of grades will be used for this course.
All the provisions of the NCSU code of academic integrity apply to students enrolled in this course as NCSU ECE 212. In addition, it is my understanding and expectation that your signature on any test or assignment means that you neither gave nor received unauthorized aid.
My office is Robinson 221A, and my office hours are XXX. However, the best way to get in touch with me is to send email to brock@cs.unca.edu.