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B82-7 Microprogrammed Control andReliable Design of Small Compu-ters-George D. Kraft and Wing N. Toy(Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,1981, 428 pp., $25.00).

Described in its preface as a "cook-book" of microprogramming and reli-ability techniques, Kraft and Toy's textshould be useful to practicing engineers aswell as students interested in the design ofhighly reliable microprogrammed smallcomputer systems.The book is a detailed exposition of the

methods and philosophies of Bell Labo-ratories in the two areas indicated by thetitle: microprogramming and reliabledesign techniques. After an introductorychapter devoted to the differencesbetween conventional and micropro-

grammed control units that includes basicarchitectures, control store organization,emulation, and nanoprogramming con-cepts, the real meat of the text begins withthe discussion of internal processor con-trol in the second chapter. Included inthis chapter are vertical and horizontalmicroprogramming, various techniquesfor generating microprogram store ad-dresses, including conditional branchinginstructions, microsubroutines, func-tional branching, microprogram loops,interrupts, and microprogram sequenc-ing. Numerous examples and options areprovided for each of these topics.The first section continues with con-

sideration of the control of main storageoperations. A summary of memory tech-nology and communication leads to thepresentation of various synchronous andasynchronous busing schemes and mem-ory options. Direct memory access tech-niques for these buses and memories arealso detailed. The first section concludeswith a discussion of control of input/out-put operations, including the general I/Ostructure, fixed and variable timingsignals, programmed I/O, partial micro-programmed control, and synchroni-zation.The mathematics and basic concepts of

redundancy, reliability, and maintain-ability open the book's second section.Such classical reliability measures asmean time between failures, availability,mean time to failure, and mean time torepair are defined. The authors also con-sider fault characteristics, assumptions,and basic approaches to improving reli-ability before going on to present a largecollection of existing and proposed fault-detection techniques. In the collection arediscussions of coding techniques, data

path checking, control path checking,echo checking, problems in checking de-coders, totally self-checking circuits, con-trol store checking, error detection inarithmetic and logic operations, andhardware checks for software bugs.

Kraft and Toy also treat fault diag-nosis. After introducing basic concepts,they delve into microprogram diagnos-tics. Following this is a presentation offault indication, diagnostic observationpoints, marginal circuit diagnostics, andexternal control of diagnostics.The book concludes with a discussion

of the design of Ma Bell's fault-tolerantESS processors. This is an excellentchapter because it provides a case historythat is relevant to the material in the otherchapters of the book. Indeed, Micropro-grammed Control and Reliable Design ofSmall Computers might have been bothbetter and more understandable had theauthors presented parts of this chapter asan introduction to the text. I suggest thisparticular revision because a reader mustimmediately understand that the designof a fault-tolerant computer system in-volves many issues that must be con-sidered together.

Overall, I would rate this text highly asa handbook. My only significant objec-tion to it is that the detail in which thematerial is presented makes for some ex-tremely tedious reading. As I have noted,however, the book is intended as a "cook-book," and cookbooks, by their verynature, need to be detailed.

Michael SieversCalifornia Institute of Technology

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Reader Service Number 98

132

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COMPUTER

B82-8 The Brains of Men and Ma-chines-Ernest W. Kent (McGraw-Hill,New York, 1981, 286 pp., $15.95).

Each year we learn more about the hu-man species and the role that machinesplay in modern society. Thus it would notbe difficult to find considerable evidenceto support the thesis that "Man buildsmachines as an extension of himself." Infact, over the last decade, many signifi-cant advances have been made in theareas of automation, automatic control,and machine understanding. However,despite their potential importance ascomponents of robotic devices, machinesable to mimic the activity of the humanbrain in a realistic way have yet to be con-structed. If we assume that the produc-tion of such machines is desirable, thenthis book can be considered extremelyuseful. It provides much of the necessaryneurological background informationand many significant ideas which are rele-vant to the comparison of the humanbrain with any counterpart that may beneeded to build an intelligent robot.

Kent presents a detailed and compre-hensive study of the human brain and itsmode of operation, subdividing hismaterial into 10 chapters. The earlier sec-tions of the book discuss the physicalstructure of the brain and describe its roleas an input processor and generator ofoutputs; visual perception and auralprocessing are also covered in somedetail. Later chapters outline perceptualprocesses, goal-seeking activity, andspecialization, and the author concludeshis presentation with a description of in-formation storage and retrieval withinthe brain and a consideration of the con-cept of the mind as it relates to livingorganisms and artificial systems. Theorganization of the individual chaptersand their order of presentation appear tohave been well thought out. The net effectof the author's effort has been the pro-duction of a text that provides a sound,step-by-step introduction to what isbecoming a rapidly expanding volume ofknowledge.Throughout the book the author uses a

variety of models to describe the brainand its function. Where appropriate, heintroduces corresponding models fromcomputer science and technology in orderto point out similarities and differencesbetween natural (organic) and artificialsystems. Because the book's overall treat-ment is essentially introductory, complexissues have often been excessively over-simplified so that basic principles won'tbe masked by too much technical detail.But thanks to the author's skillful man-ner of presentation, little of value hasbeen lost from the text.

The Brains of Men and Machines iswell illustrated and contains an extensivebibliography. There were one or twospelling errors and a few mistakes incross-referencing between diagrams andthe textual narrative that accompaniesthem. Also, a reference to Weizenbaum'swork (in Chapter 10) seemed to be miss-ing from the list of citations in thebibliography, and similar problems occurin other parts of the text. For example, inChapter 8 the author makes several refer-ences to the linguistic works of Chomsky.Unfortunately, the details necessary tolocate these works are not given-per-haps knowledge of this material is anassumed prerequisite. Apart from thesevery small points, however, the book hasbeen produced to an extremely highstandard.Although written by an author whose

expertise lies primarily in the area ofbrainresearch, the text is not specificallyoriented towards students of this field.Rather, it is aimed at an interdisciplinaryaudience. As a result, postgraduate engi-neers and computer scientists would un-doubtedly find the book very readable. Itcould also be used as a supplementaryreading text to support courses in arti-ficial intelligence. However, dependingupon the objectives of such courses, thereare several other books that would prob-ably be equally suitable. The merit of thisparticular book lies in the fact that it con-tains a considerable amount ofnew mate-rial and many fresh ideas.On the whole I found the text both

stimulating and interesting. However,after reading it I was a little disappointedfor two minor reasons. First, the intro-ductory section led me to believe that Iwould find more material on roboticslater in the book. Unfortunately, this wasnot the case, even though the book endedon a very philosophical theme: the robotmind. And second, I thought the bookwould have had far more appeal if theauthor had included more discussion ofhow the work in his field is being ap-plied by others (engineers and technolo-gists) to the construction of intelli-gent machines-specifically, machinesdesigned to help us through the process ofeveryday living.As I said, however, these points are

quite minor. Indeed, I feel that the bookis a valuable contribution to the literatureof this field and would make a very usefuladdition to the bookshelves of those in-terested in artificial intelligence.

Philip G. BarkerInteractive Systems Research

Reader Service Number 99

mlWhether designed to share information,share resources, or cooperate in accom-plishing large processing tasks, networksof small computers, intelligent terminals,work stations, or specialized devices are in-stalled in a wide variety of application en-vironments. This tutorial-devoted exclu-sively to systems or networks of micro-computers-contains more than 30 re-prints, as well as case studies outlining anumber of networks and approaches. 268PP.

Order #395TUTORIAL-MICROCOMPUTER

NETWORKSEdited by Harvey A. Freeman and

Kenneth J. Thurber 1981Members-$15.00

Nonmembers-S20.00

software

Efwmnmets

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lbThis tutorial addresses a broad definitionof the software development environ-ment. Thirty articles originally presentedat Compsac 81, are sectioned to covergoals, language-based environments,Unix, methodologies, configuration,human/computer interaction, organiza-tion and ergonomics, as well as personalsystems. 476 pp.

Order #385

Tutorial-SOFTWAREDEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTSEdited by Anthony I. Wasserman

1981

Members-S18.75Nonmembers-$25.00

.1April 1982

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B82-9 Handbook of Microcircuit De-sign and Application-David F. Stoutand Milton Kaufman (McGraw-Hill,New York, 1980, 499 pages, $37.50).

One thing that can be said about thistext is that it covers a great deal ofground. It offers to "help you solve-quickly and in a thoroughly practicalmanner-the problems relating to thedesign and application of most classes ofdigital and analog circuits," and its 27chapters are strong support of that state-ment. Traditional areas of digital logicdesign, microprocessors and peripheralchips, and analog circuits, includingoperational amplifiers and digital filters,are just a few of the subjects examined bythe authors. Interestingly, they dividetheir book almost evenly between digitaland analog circuits.The individual chapters can be de-

scribed as topical, covering either a singlesubject or a narrow class of related topics.The organization of many of the chaptersfollows a similar pattern: the chapterbegins with a brief introduction describ-ing the device or device family and sometypical areas of application, and isfollowed by a table listing parameterscommon to devices in the family beingdiscussed. Additionally, there is often alist of alternate names by which the deviceis known. This is followed by timingcharts, truth tables, and design equa-tions. Design examples, which are numer-ous, use the equations found in the designequations table and are accompanied by anarrative description ofcircuit operation.Unfortunately, although there are refer-ences at the end of most of the chapters,the authors have not included any exer-cise problems.The book starts off covering topics in

traditional digital logic design. In theirexamination of combinational logic de-sign, Stout and Kaufman look ateverything from basic switching gates tobinary and BCD adders. They also dis-cuss sequential circuits such as set-resetflip-flops and serial/parallel shiftregisters, clock waveform generation,memory system design, structured arrayssuch as ROMs and PLAs, and even de-vote two chapters to serial and parallelcommunication devices. One of the moreinteresting application illustrations in thislast area is a modem receiver and trans-

mitter designed to interface a low-costaudio cassette to a universal asyn-chronous receiver-transmitter.The microprocessor is first explained in

Chapter 13. Here, the authors describethe organization of a microprocessor bydiscussing the popular 74181 ALU andbuilding around it with other TTL parts-multiplexers, a program counter, andmemory and instruction registers. Thisparticular type of treatment should havesome appeal to the logic designer un-familiar with microprocessors. In additionto the actual organization ofthe hardware,Stout and Kaufman examine some ele-ments of microprocessor software.

After this introductory chapter, theauthors cover specific applications of themicroprocessor: an A/D converter, a mi-crocomputer-based traffic system, a key-board scanner, and a polyphonic musicsynthesizer. For each of these applica-tions there is a discussion and detailedanalysis of the specific problem area and,in some cases, of the requirements for thesystem to be developed. They then pre-sent solutions in the form of flowcharts,hardware diagrams, and program list-ings, all of which are accompanied by de-scriptive narrative.Chapter 18, entitled "Special-Purpose

LSI Circuits," covers the MotorolaMC6844 direct memory access controller,the National 57109 number cruncher, andthe Manchester encoder-decoder, alsoknown as the MIL-STD-1553A interfacedevice.Analog circuits are the exclusive sub-

ject of the last nine chapters. The authorsbegin with an examination of op ampsand a discussion of the design of severalsecond- and third-order high- and low-pass filters, and various band-pass andband-stop filters, all based on op amps.Following this are chapters on regulators;nonlinear analog microcircuits that in-clude a look at logarithmic amplifiers,multipliers, and log-antilog multiplier-di-viders; and analog signal generation. Thislast chapter describes the creation of rect-angular, sine, triangular, and sawtoothwaveforms of varying frequencies andduty cycles.The final sections of the handbook

cover sample-and-hold circuits, analog-to-digital converters, digital-to-analogconverters, and phase-locked loops. Aspart of the PLL chapter, the authors ex-amine phase detectors, voltage-con-trolled-oscillators, and PLL systems on asingle chip such as the frequency multi-plier and FM detector.

Stout and Kaufman's work is, as thetitle implies, a handbook; however, thereis no unifying theme for the book, apartfrom the fact that the microcircuitsdescribed are either implemented on asingle chip or are based on circuits im-

plemented on a single chip. Other thanthis rather tenuous connection, the lastnine chapters appear totally unrelated tothe first half of the book. In addition, thechapters on digital circuits are obviouslynot as well developed as those on analogcircuits. For instance, a section on PLAsseems out of place in the chapter entitled"Sequential Circuits."The "imbalance" is even more evident,

though, if the reader compares the lengthof the chapter on op amps (42 pages) withthat of the chapter on microprocessors(15 pages). Fifteen pages to cover boththe hardware organization and softwareof microprocessors? Such casual mentionof important topics like microprogram-ming, without further elaboration, mayleave the reader more confused than in-formed. In other words, if a reader iscoming into contact with microproces-sors for the first time, the introductorychapter on the subject is not likely to serveas adequate preparation for the applica-tion chapters that follow.The order in which the material on mi-

croprocessors is presented is alsoquestionable, in my opinion. Micropro-cessor control lines are mentioned as earlyas Chapter 5, and microprocessor per-ipherals are discussed in Chapters 10 and11. Yet discussion of the microprocessoris postponed until Chapter 13. I wouldhave preferred to see microprocessorsdiscussed before serial and parallel per-ipherals were covered.To its credit, most of the book's

chapters are well organized and the ma-terial is easy to find. Also, the reader isaided by a comprehensive 17-page indexat the end of the book.

Using this handbook, the reader shouldhave little difficulty in designing most ofthe analog and digital circuits described inthe text. It can therefore be a very usefuladdition to the bookshelf of the practic-ing engineer, technician, or hobbyist.However, I cannot recommend it as atextbook. Although it succeeds at tellinghow to design a circuit, it does not explainwhy a particular circuit works. For exam-ple, the reader designing a third-orderhigh-pass filter according to the rules ofChapter 20 will have to consult anothertext to understand why his or her creationworks. Even with the well-covered opamp, the reader does not get to see insidethe circuitry.

I believe the book will disappoint thestudent who acquires it in order to learnabout microprocessors. The prefix"micro" is rapidly becoming overworked.It seems to gain wider usage and less mean-ing with the passage of time.

Alexander MiczoHoneywell Information Systems

Reader Service Number 100

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