35326 - Digital System Electronics Laboratory (Graduate Course)

Learning outcomes

Goal of the course is to familiarize students with the design and optimization of CMOS IC digital circuits with respect to different quality metrics: cost, speed, reliability, and power dissipation. The students will design and characterize complex modules such as adders, multipliers, and memories by using a CMOS technology and CAD tools available thanks to  Europractice program. 

Course contents

• Characterization of the available CMOS technology. Design rule manual. CMOS process flow, layout rules. Analysis and simulation of electrical static and dynamic MOS transistor properties, electrical properties of interconnect wires.

• Cell-based design methodology, characterization of logic and sequential cells for logic simulation and synthesis tools. Models to estimate delay and power. Student design activity aimed at creating a cell library (schematic and layout design, transistor level simulation in order to compute the values of the parameters used in the models, description of the cell in a hardware description language (VHDL)).

• Student's main project activity: design and characterization of a complex module such as adders, multipliers, and memories. The activity will cover different design abstraction levels (architectural, logic, transistor-level and layout).

Prerequisites:  the module is part of the course "Digital System Electronics".

Readings/Bibliography

1. Jan M. Rabaey,  Anantha  P. Chandrakasan, Borivoje Nikolic,  Digital Integrated Circuits: A Design Perspective, 2nd Edition 2003, Prenctice Hall  (http://bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu/Classes/IcBook/index.html)
2. N. Weste, K.Eshraghian, Principle of VLSI Design: a System Perpecitive, Addison Wesley

Teaching methods

The students will design and characterize logic and sequential cells and complex modules such as adders, multipliers, and memories by using a CMOS technology and CAD tools both available thanks the Europractice program.

Assessment methods

Students have to present a written report on the project activity and then discuss the obtained results. 

Teaching tools

Additional docs (in italian) are available via web.

Office hours

See the website of Eleonora Franchi Scarselli