Foundations of digital hardware
Level 1 makes sure you reason about hardware as circuits, not programs, before you write serious RTL. The labs are small, but they already run on Lumina Sim, so you meet the tool on day one.
- Duration
- 6 weeks
- Level
- Beginner
- Before you start
- Basic programming in any language. Electrical engineering students can skip 1.1 and 1.2 with a placement test.
- Derive and minimise logic from a truth table
- Explain why synchronous design exists
- Design a clean, fully specified state machine
- Read a timing path and know how to fix it
- Work with Git, scripts and a CI regression, the way a team does
6 modules
- 1.1
Digital logic
Topics
Number systems, Boolean algebra, K-maps, combinational blocks: mux, decoder, adder, comparator
Lumina lab
Simulate a ripple-carry and a carry-lookahead adder and compare their delays
You can
Derive and minimise logic from a truth table
- 1.2
Sequential logic
Topics
Latches and flip-flops, setup and hold, metastability basics, counters, shift registers, LFSRs
Lumina lab
Build an LFSR and follow its waveforms in Debug
You can
Explain why synchronous design exists
- 1.3
Finite state machines
FSM coverage · PlannedTopics
Moore and Mealy, state encoding (binary, one-hot, Gray), reset strategy
Lumina lab
Traffic-light and UART receiver state machines, with an FSM coverage report
You can
Design a clean, fully specified FSM
- 1.4
Timing fundamentals
Topics
Propagation delay, critical path, clock skew, slack, pipelining
Lumina lab
Calculate slack by hand, then check it against a standard-cell timing table from a predictive PDK
You can
Read a timing path and know how to fix it
- 1.5
Computer arithmetic
Topics
Two's complement, fixed point, multipliers, barrel shifters, GF(2) arithmetic
Lumina lab
A GF(2⁸) multiplier, reused later in the AES capstone
You can
Build the datapaths cryptography needs
- 1.6
Tooling basics
Topics
Linux shell, Git, Make and Python scripting, reading logs and exit codes
Lumina lab
Script a Lumina regression that CI can run
You can
Work the way a team does
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Training
hello@lumeeslab.comHelpful to include
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