VLSI System Design

Old Dominion University

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

 


 

ECE 495/595 VLSI System Design

 

 

 

Instructor

Dr. K. Vijayan Asari

Office

Kaufman Hall, Room 231L

Phone

757-683-3752

Email

vasari@odu.edu

 

 

Office Hours

 

Tuesday

1:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Thursday

1:30 pm – 4:30 pm

 

 

Lectures

 

Time

5:00 pm – 6:55 pm Monday

 

5:00 pm – 6:55 pm Wednesday

Location

KAUF 213

 

 

Credits

3

 

 

 Prerequisites 

ECE 313 Electronic Circuits

 

ECE 341 Digital System Design

  

 

Objective

The main objective of this course is to provide an introduction to modern VLSI design. The course deals with advanced logic and system design along with circuit design. The most rewarding aspect of this course is that it puts together previously learned basics on circuit design, logic design, and digital architecture design to understand the tradeoffs between the different levels of abstraction.

 

Course Description

This course focuses on the design and synthesis of Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) chips using CMOS technology for complex digital systems using integrated circuit cells as building blocks and employing hierarchical design methods. Design issues at layout, schematic, logic and RTL levels will be studied. Commercial design software will be used for laboratory exercises. An overview of VLSI computer-aided design (CAD) tools and theoretical concepts in VLSI architectures and algorithms will also be discussed.

 

Course Outline

This course is designed to provide undergraduate and graduate students in electrical and computer engineering the ability to design and synthesis VLSI chips using CMOS technology focusing towards the development of an Application Specific Integrated Circuit. Topics: introduction, design tools, the CMOS transistor, fabrication, layout and design rules implementing logic in CMOS, design of adders, dynamic CMOS logic high speed adders and ALUs, CMOS transistor theory, circuit characterization, delay estimation, CMOS performance optimization, clocking strategies, other building blocks and memory, control design, electrical effects, introduction to design verification, introduction to testing, design of high performance circuits, low power design high performance processor design, introduction to timing verification, introduction to formal verification, verification of large designs, design for testability, design of asynchronous circuits, future trends

 

Textbook

Jan M. Rabaey, Anantha Chandrakasan and Borivoje Nikolic, Digital Integrated Circuits – A Design Perspective

Prentice Hall, 2003 

 

Supplementary Textbook

John P. Uyemura, Physical Design of CMOS Integrated Circuits Using L-EDIT

PWS Publishing Co., 1995

(Contains the student version of L-EDIT)

 

References

Wayne Wolf, Modern VLSI Design – System-on-Chip Design

Prentice Hall, 2002

Neil H. E. Weste, Kamran Eshraghian, and Micheal John Sebastian, Principles of CMOS VLSI Design - A Systems Perspective

Addison Wesley, 2001

Ken Martin, Digital Integrated Circuit Design

Oxford University Press, 2000

S. M. Kang and Y. Leblebici, CMOS Digital Integrated Circuits - Analysis and Design

McGraw-Hill, 1999

J.P. Uyemura, CMOS Logic Circuit Design

Kluwer Academic, 1999

R.J. Baker, H.W. Li, D.E Boyce, CMOS Circuit Design, Layout and Simulation

IEEE Press, 1998

M. Sarrafzadeh, An Introduction to VLSI Physical Design

McGraw-Hill, 1996

 

Homework

Homework will be assigned every week except during the midterm and the final exam. Solutions will be posted after the due date.

 

Exams

There will be one mid-term exam and one comprehensive final exam. One may use the textbook during an exam if they are kept free of any additional writings. 

 

Project

This is a project-oriented course in which the students will be designing and evaluating one of the following digital circuits: an adder/subtractor, a multiplier, a ring counter, an ALU. Weekly assignments will be in the form of design of the cells for the project.

 

Laboratory

VLSI Systems Laboratory - KAUF 200

 

Related Links

L-EDIT

SPICE

MOSIS

 

L-Edit (Student Version)

L-Edit (Help)

 

Grading Policy for Undergraduate Students - ECE495

Homework

30 %

Midterm

20 %

Final

30 %

Project

20 %

 

Course Description for Graduate Students - ECE595

Each graduate student will make a 15 minutes presentation on a key topic in advanced VLSI design and the class will discuss the ideas. Students will also be designing and evaluating an integrated system-on-a-chip in a team project. Project will include developing the specification of the product, performing an analysis of its feasibility, developing the detailed design, writing a report on the design and making a presentation to the class

 

Additional References

IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems

IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems

IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits

The Journal of VLSI Signal Processing-Systems for Signal, Image, and Video Technology, Kluwer Academic

Wai-Kai Chen, The VLSI Handbook, CRC Press, 2000

V. G. Oklobdzija, High Performance System Design, IEEE Press, 1999

M. J. S. Smith, Application Specific Integrated Circuits, Addison Wesley, 1997

A. Chandrakasan, W. J. Bowhill and F. Fox, Design of High Performance Microprocessor Circuits, IEEE Press, 2001

Keshab K. Parhi, VLSI Digital Signal Processing Systems: Design and Implementation, Wiley, 1999

H. J. Ray Liu and Kung Yao, High-Performance VLSI Signal Processing Innovative Architectures and Algorithms – 

Algorithms and Architectures (Volume-1), Wiley, 1997

H. J. Ray Liu and Kung Yao, High-Performance VLSI Signal Processing Innovative Architectures and Algorithms – 

Systems Design and Applications (Volume 2), Wiley, 1997

 

Grading Policy for Graduate Students - ECE595

Homework

20 %

Midterm

20 %

Final

30 %

Project

20 %

Term Paper

10%

 

Honor Code

Students are expected to follow the ODU Honor Code for all assignments and exams. Any violations will be dealt with strictly according to university policy. However, this is also a course, which requires a lot of interaction, and sharing of ideas is encouraged. But all work that you turn in with your name on it should reflect your work, not someone else's. If at any time you have a question about whether you are violating the Honor Code, please ask me to make sure.

 

Disabilities

Students who have documented disabilities in accordance with university guidelines will be provided appropriate opportunities if the documentation is brought to the instructor's attention.

 

Course Syllabus

Module 1.
Introduction
: digital systems and VLSI, system specification, behavior model, register transfer level design, logic level design, circuit level design, device level design, motivation and overview

Module 2.
Transistors and layout
: MOS (FET) transistor, fabrication process, structure of the transistor, static behavior, dynamic behavior, design procedure, wires and vias, design rules, layout design and tools

Module 3.
The inverter
: definitions and properties, static behavior, dynamic behavior, power and energy consumption, static CMOS inverter, power consumption and power-delay product, effects of technology scaling 

Module 4.
Logic gates
: static CMOS design, ratioed logic, pass-transistor logic, dynamic CMOS design, noise consideration in dynamic design, power consumption in CMOS gates, switching activity of a logic gate, low power CMOS design

Module 5.
Sequential circuits
: latches and flip-flops, static sequential circuits, master-slave and edge-triggered flip-flops, dynamic sequential circuits, dynamic two-phase flip-flops, clocking strategies, advanced clocking analysis

Module 6.
Subsystem design
: subsystem design principles, pipelining, datapaths in digital processor architectures, arithmetic circuits, adders, multipliers and shifters, logic design considerations, programmable logic arrays, field-programmable gate arrays

Module 7.
Interconnects
: capacitive parasitics, modeling interconnect capacitance, capacitance and performance in CMOS, resistive parasitics, modeling and scaling of interconnect resistance, inductive parasitics, packaging, thermal considerations

Module 8.
Timing issues in digital circuits
: clock skew and sequential circuit performance, single-phase edge-triggered clocking, two-phase master-slave clocking, clocking styles, on-chip clock generation and distribution

Module 9.
Design methodologies
: design analysis and simulation, design verification, timing verification and functional verification, implementation approaches, cell-based design methodology, array-based implementation approaches, design synthesis, circuit synthesis, logic synthesis and architecture synthesis, validation and testing, test procedure, design for testability, test-pattern generation

 

Term Paper Topics - ECE595

CMOS Scaling for High Performance and Low Power Applications

Minimizing Power Consumption in Digital CMOS Circuits

Trends in Low Power RAM Circuit Technologies

CMOS Circuit Speed and Buffer Optimization

Clocking Schemes for High-Speed Digital Systems

Functional Verification of System on Chips

Register Transfer Operation Analysis During Data Path Verification

Logic Design of Asynchronous Circuits

VLSI Implementation of 2-D Discrete Wavelet Transform

A Reconfigurable Architecture for Wireless Image Compression

Low Power Solutions to Wireless Applications

Design of an On-Chip Test Pattern Generator

Reconfigurable Computing for DSP

VLSI Array Architectures for Vector Quantization

Partitioning Sequential Circuits for Low Power

Algorithmic Aspects in VLSI Design

Hybrid Reconfigurable Processors

Low Power Realization of Digital Filters

Implementation of Multiplierless Digital Filters

VLSI Implementation of Adaptive Delta-Sigma Modulator

Integrated Memory/Logic Architecture for Image Processing

VLSI Design of Low Power Floating Point Accumulator

Enhancement Techniques for Adders

Estimation and Optimization of Switching Activity

Advanced Embedded Processor Circuit Design

Estimating and Modeling On-Chip Wiring Delays

Dynamically Programmable Gate Arrays

 

Summer 2003 Schedule

Mid-Term: June 11

Term Paper Presentation: July 14

Final Exam: July 16