PROBLEM 1
Can you name all of the signals in the original 25-pin RS-232 connector?
ANSWER 1
Pins 9, 10, 11, 18, and 25 are unassigned/reserved. The rest are:
| Pin | Abbreviation | Source | Description |
| 1 | PG | – | Protective ground |
| 2 | TD | DTE | Transmitted data |
| 3 | RD | DCE | Received data |
| 4 | RTS | DTE | Request to send |
| 5 | CTS | DCE | Clear to send |
| 6 | DSR | DCE | Data Set Ready |
| 7 | SG | – | Signal ground |
| 8 | CD | DCE | Carrier detect |
| 12 | SCD | DCE | Secondary carrier detect |
| 13 | SCTS | DCE | Secondary clear to send |
| 14 | STD | DTE | Secondary transmitted data |
| 15 | TC | DCE | Transmitter clock |
| 16 | SRD | DCE | Secondary received data |
| 17 | RC | DCE | Receiver clock |
| 19 | SRTS | DTE | Secondary request to send |
| 20 | DTR | DTE | Data terminal ready |
| 21 | SQ | DCE | Signal quality |
| 22 | RI | DCE | Ring indicator |
| 23 | – | DTE | Data rate selector |
| 24 | ETC | DTE | External transmitter clock |
PROBLEM 2
What is the key difference between a Moore state machine and a Mealy state machine?
ANSWER 2
The key difference between Moore and Mealy is that in a Moore state machine, the outputs depend only on the current state, while in a Mealy state machine, the outputs can also be affected directly by the inputs.
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PROBLEM 3
What are some practical reasons you might choose one state machine over the other?
ANSWER 3
In practice, the difference between Moore and Mealy in most situations is not very important. However, when you’re trying to optimize the design in certain ways, it sometimes is.
Generally speaking, a Mealy machine can have fewer state variables than the corresponding Moore machine, which will save physical resources on a chip. This can be important in low-power designs.
On the other hand, a Moore machine will typically have shorter logic paths between flip-flops (total combinatorial gate delays), which will enable it to run at a higher clock speed than the corresponding Mealy machine.
PROBLEM 4
What is the key feature that distinguishes a DSP from any other general-purpose CPU?
ANSWER 4
Usually, the key distinguishing feature of a DSP when compared with a general-purpose CPU is that the DSP can execute certain signal-processing operations with few, if any, CPU cycles wasted on instructions that do not compute results.
One of the most basic operations in many key DSP algorithms is the MAC (multiply-accumulate) operation, which is the fundamental step used in matrix dot and cross products, FIR and IIR filters, and fast Fourier transforms (FFTs). A DSP will typically have a register and/or memory organization and a data path that enables it to do at least 64 MAC operations (and often many more) on unique data pairs in a row without any clocks wasted on loop overhead or data movement. General-purpose CPUs do not generally have enough registers to accomplish this without using additional instructions to move data between registers and memory.
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