From gates to embedded systems: A bottom-up approach to digital design
Giuliano Donzellini, Domenico Ponta · 2009
The paper presents Deeds, an educational tool for digital design. Deeds covers combinational and sequential logic networks, finite state machines, microcomputer assembly programming and interfacing. It provides quasi-professional simulation features with an extremely simple user interface. Deeds can be seen as a learning environment based on three simulators integrated together, associated with a large repository of application projects, available on the web. Deeds supports the learning of contemporary digital design, from logic gates to the basics of embedded systems, helping to build a solid foundation for further study. The paper contains an example of a laboratory session dealing with a system including a state machine, standard logic and a microcomputer with a simple interrupt controller.