Digital design
by M. Morris Mano · first published 1984
6mentions
5recommended by
5HN commenters
2016–2024first – last mentioned
100% recommend
Why HN recommends it
Starts from basic gates and builds up to FPGAs, teaching Verilog along the way. No prior electronics background is needed, making it a good first book on digital logic.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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I would suggest Digital Design by Morris Mano[1]. It'll start off with basic intro from digital gates to FPGAs itself! And you really don't need any EE background for this book. This book starts from absolute basics and it'll also…
on “Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware” ↗…https://store.digilentinc.com/fpga-for-beginners/ The software is free: https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/ise-design-suit... The hard part is several semesters worth of textbooks to go through that cover digital logic (try Mano's "Digital Design: With an Introduction to the Verilog HDL" to start with) through computer architecture in order to know what to do with the board.
on “FPGAs Have the Wrong Abstraction for Computing” ↗Aho/Ullman Foundations of CS http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html O'Halloran/Bryant CSPP https://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/ David Money Harris Digital Design... https://booksite.elsevier.com/9780128000564/
on “Ask HN: What book to read to get a footing in CS theory?” ↗…boards) they are free (b) learn VHDL and/or Verilog. Plenty of books and online resources. A good book I recommend is RTL Hardware Design Using VHDL [5] (c) I assume you know some basic principles of digital design (gates, logic maps, etc.). If not you'll need to learn that first. A book is the best option here, I highly recommend Digital Design [6] by Morris Mano [1] https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Microelectronic-Fabricat...…
on “Ask HN: Where do I get started on ASICs, FPGA, RTL, Verilog et. al?” ↗…works) but "Code" is at best at a pop-sci level. It prepares one for doing digital logic as well as "A Brief History Of Time" prepares one for doing coursework in cosmology. Try the Brown book or Mano's "Digital Design" (my preference; took a while to remember his name) and see if it works for you. Good luck.
on “Cascade: A Just-In-Time Compiler for Verilog” ↗There's a time and space for games, but I'll just note that for HN readers, following https://www.amazon.com.au/Digital-Design-Computer-Architectu... and building a RISC-V in Verilog is easily manageable.
on “Turing Complete is a game about computer science” ↗