Simplifying analog CMOS design for undergraduates

An attempt has been made to introduce VLSI design education into the traditional undergraduate electrical engineering curriculum at the State University of New York, New Paltz, through an innovative one-semester digital VLSI design course sequence. The emphasis in VLSI education is on full custom design, thereby exposing undergraduate students to the lower levels of design. The course is compatible with the requirements of the MOSIS silicon foundry for chip fabrication.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

The Air Force Institute of Technology, like many other schools, uses the Berkeley Tool Set for chip layout in VLSI design courses. One of the important tools of this set is the layout editor, MAGIC. Designing at the mask level is one of the important aspects of a VLSI design course, as it allows students to get a feel for what kinds of decisions and design trade-offs must be made in creating a circuit. One of the drawbacks of using a layout editor, such as MAGIC, is the amount of time it takes students to learn the interface to the tool, and the resistance to having to memorize a long list of commands or macros. To overcome this drawback, we have created a graphical user interface using Tooltool.

This book covers the design of next generation microprocessors in deep submicron CMOS technologies. The chapters in Design of High Performance Microprocessor Circuits were written by some of the world's leading technologists, designers, and researchers. All levels of system abstraction are covered, but the emphasis rests squarely on circuit design. Examples are drawn from processors designed at AMD, Digital/Compaq, IBM, Intel, MIPS, Mitsubishi, and Motorola. Each topic of this invaluable reference stands alone so the chapters can be read in any order. The following topics are covered in depth: Architectural constraints of CMOS VLSI design Technology scaling, low-power devices, SOI, and process variations Contemporary design styles including a survey of logic families, robust dynamic circuits, asynchronous logic, self-timed pipelines, and fast arithmetic units Latches, clocks and clock distribution, phase-locked and delay-locked loops Register file, cach memory, and embedded DRAM design High-speed signaling techniques and I/O design ESD, electromigration, and hot-carrier reliability CAD tools, including timing verification and the analysis of power distribution schemes Test and testability Design of High-Performance Microprocessor Circuits assumes a basic knowledge of digital circuit design and device operation, and covers a broad range of circuit styles and VLSI design techniques. Packed with practical know-how, it is an indispensable reference for practicing circuit designers, architects, system designers, CAD tool developers, process technologists, and researchers. It is also an essential text for VLSI design courses.

From the Publisher: This book covers the design of next generation microprocessors in deep submicron CMOS technologies. The chapters in Design of High Performance Microprocessor Circuits were written by some of the world’s leading technologists, designers, and researchers. All levels of system abstraction are covered, but the emphasis rests squarely on circuit design. Examples are drawn from processors designed at AMD, Digital/Compaq, IBM, Intel, MIPS, Mitsubishi, and Motorola. Each topic of this invaluable reference stands alone so the chapters can be read in any order. The following topics are covered in depth: Architectural constraints of CMOS VLSI design Technology scaling, low-power devices, SOI, and process variations Contemporary design styles including a survey of logic families, robust dynamic circuits, asynchronous logic, self-timed pipelines, and fast arithmetic units Latches, clocks and clock distribution, phase-locked and delay-locked loops Register file, cache memory, and embedded DRAM design High-speed signaling techniques and I/O design ESD, electromigration, and hot-carrier reliability CAD tools, including timing verification and the analysis of power distribution schemes Test and testability Design of High-Performance Microprocessor Circuits assumes a basic knowledge of digital circuit design and device operation, and covers a broad range of circuit styles and VLSI design techniques. Packed with practical know-how, it is an indispensable reference for practicing circuit designers, architects, system designers, CAD tool developers, process technologists, and researchers. It is also an essential text for VLSI design courses.

This book covers the design of next generation microprocessors in deep submicron CMOS technologies. The chapters in Design of High Performance Microprocessor Circuits were written by some of the world's leading technologists, designers, and researchers. All levels of system abstraction are covered, but the emphasis rests squarely on circuit design. Examples are drawn from processors designed at AMD, Digital/Compaq, IBM, Intel, MIPS, Mitsubishi, and Motorola. Each topic of this invaluable reference stands alone so the chapters can be read in any order. The following topics are covered in depth: Architectural constraints of CMOS VLSI design Technology scaling, low-power devices, SOI, and process variations Contemporary design styles including a survey of logic families, robust dynamic circuits, asynchronous logic, self-timed pipelines, and fast arithmetic units Latches, clocks and clock distribution, phase-locked and delay-locked loops Register file, cache memory, and embedded DRAM design High-speed signaling techniques and I/O design ESD, electromigration, and hot-carrier reliability CAD tools, including timing verification and the analysis of power distribution schemes Test and testability Design of High-Performance Microprocessor Circuits assumes a basic knowledge of digital circuit design and device operation, and covers a broad range of circuit styles and VLSI design techniques. Packed with practical know-how, it is an indispensable reference for practicing circuit designers, architects, system designers, CAD tool developers, process technologists, and researchers. It is also an essential text for VLSI design courses.

As demand rises for circuits with higher performance, higher complexity, and decreased feature size, asynchronous (clockless) paradigms will become more widely used in the semiconductor industry, as evidenced by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors' (ITRS) prediction of a likely shift from synchronous to asynchronous design styles in order to increase circuit robustness, decrease power, and alleviate many clock-related issues 1 .ITRS predicts that asynchronous circuits will account for 19% of chip area within the next 5 years, and 30% of chip area within the next 10 years 2 .To meet this growing industry need, students in Computer Engineering should be introduced to asynchronous circuit design to make them more marketable and more prepared for the challenges faced by the digital design community for years to come. DI Register DI CombinationalLogic

Tools and techniques for high-level design of digital systems have been recently incorporated into some courses of Electronics and Mechatronics Engineering programs at ITESM. This paper reports the design, implementation and verification of a personal digital assistant (PDA) as a final project of the VLSI Design course at ITESM Campus Puebla. The PDA has been specified as being composed of five modules: notepad, clock/calendar, translator, hangman game and calculator. The design approach that has been used consists in using VHDL as the hardware description language and FPGA demonstration boards for physical prototyping. Details of the specification, implementation and verification of each component of the PDA are reported.

There is a widespread interest in teaching analog microsystem design at the undergraduate level. The author discusses a means to address the problem of introducing a laboratory component into analog CMOS microsystems design at the undergraduate level by development of an analog CMOS VLSI design resource kit. This kit is to be made available to educators nationwide. >

We have developed a VLSI curriculum based on personal computers that can be used at teaching institutions and corporations alike. The curriculum consists of three courses: a capstone VLSI course, an analog design course, and an advanced digital design synthesis course. No workstations are necessary, laboratories may be given without teaching assistants, and the entire system be used with minimal required infrastructure support. Emphasis of the teaching curriculum is on design methodology and practicable applications.

Book Review: Analog VLSI Design — nMOS and CMOS

The paper presents the results of a survey (n = 279) conducted with the students of an undergraduate design course. The questionnaire inquired design students’ preferences regarding educational formats (distance, in-person, or combination of both); the questionnaire further explored the issue by comparing between four types of classes (project, drawing, theoretical-practical, and theoretical) and by establishing comparisons between the students’ enrolment year. The main results reveal that design students prefer in-person formats, and preference for in-person educational formats increases regarding project-based or drawing type of classes; what is more, preference for in-person educational formats is appears to be higher in second and third-year students than in first-year ones. These results have implications for design education: a direct transfer of the typical design educational format to a distance setting may be misguided and design education may require specific formats (distance or otherwise) to offer a satisfactory pedagogical experience to its students.

PurposeProduct functionalities aim to satisfy the operative needs of the customer, while product meanings (i.e. the emotion and the symbolic values represented by the product) aim to satisfy the emotional and socio‐cultural needs of the customer. What consumers are increasingly looking for in consumer products are new forms of psychological satisfaction that go beyond normal and simple consumption; today, more than ever, products define their own presence not only through their attributes, but also through the meanings that they assume, through the dialogue that they establish with the user, and also through the symbolic nature that they emanate. Figures of speech can be exploited to emphasise a message or a meaning. The purpose of this paper is to propose an application of rhetorical figures to product design that will make them more communicative.Design/methodology/approachSpecifically, the authors propose the “Rhetorical Innovation Process” as a methodology that foresees the application of figures of speech as semantic operators. First, the authors discuss several product innovations that can be interpreted according to the “Rhetorical Innovation Process”. Then, a brief workshop assignment in the strategic design course at the Faculty of Industrial Design of Politecnico di Milano explored the potentialities of the method in relation to different product typologies: 40 Italian master students were divided into eight groups (five industrial design students each) in order to develop five products per group.FindingsThe results obtained by design students demonstrated as figures of speech can stimulate associations with other contexts and modifications to existing architecture. The exploration of the “rhetorical innovation process” in collaboration with eight design student teams has shown that this method can support and enrich the concept generation phase. Moreover, four configurations proposed by the “rhetorical innovation process” allow one to generate different alternatives supporting the creative process and allowing the identification of strengths and weaknesses associated to each solution.Originality/valueThe method described in the paper elucidates the structure and process adopted by several designers and also illustrates an effective framework for communicating choices to their clients. In particular, the cross‐context associations proposed in the “rhetorical innovation process” provide additional insights and incentives during the concept generation.

The FHDL (Florida Hardware Design Language) PLA tools provide a means for specifying, simulating, and automatically laying out Programmed Logic Arrays (PLAs). These tools were created to facilitate VLSI design projects, to improve the quality of hardware design courses, and to serve as a basis for future research in VLSI design automation. At the specification level, the PLA tools allow the contents of a PLA to be specified as a set of logic equations. In addition, they provide features for facilitating the construction of PLA-based state machines. Once a PLA has been specified, it can be simulated at a high level in coordination with the simulation of the other portions of a VLSI design. After a PLA has been verified through simulation, it can be laid out automatically through an interface to the Berkeley PLA layout tools. The primary motivation for developing these tools was to provide a basis for future research in VLSI design automation.

This article compares and contrasts the use of haptic and digital sketching in the design process. It investigates the preferred sketching method of final year design students. In addition, it examines the relationship between effective communication and the use of haptic and digital sketching. A case study involving ten final year students studying product design courses at Nottingham Trent University was undertaken. The text explores the current literature and identifies the benefits of using the two methods. The inclusion of digital sketching tutorials in the undergraduate curriculum is discussed as well as the option of replacing haptic with digital sketching. The study concludes that while a wider survey with students from other design courses would be useful, the results provide strong evidence that final year students currently prefer haptic to digital sketching as an essential part of the design process.

Structured reflective journaling is a valuable tool in design education, enabling students to critically evaluate their learning, track progress, and refine their design decisions. This study explores the impact of structured reflective journaling on student learning in a five-week modular furniture design course at Tecnológico de Monterrey. Using a rubric-guided approach, students documented their progress, insights, challenges, and self-assessments. Analysis of journals and questionnaires reveals that while journaling helped students track progress and refine ideas, challenges included time constraints and student engagement with journalling. The structured rubric played a key role in guiding deeper engagement with the reflection process. Findings suggest that integrating flexible reflection milestones, alternative formats, and structured prompts can enhance journaling’s effectiveness. This paper highlights the potential of reflective journaling to develop critical thinking and self-directed learning in design students, offering insights for educators seeking to integrate structured reflection into project-based design courses.