Analysis and design of CMOS Digital IC

ESD 503
Madhav Rao, ESD Program
IIIT-Bangalore

Text and Software's

N. Weste and D. Harris, CMOS VLSI Design A Circuits
and Systems Perspective, 4th edition, Pearson
J. D. Plummer, M. D. Deal, and P. B. Griffin, Silicon
VLSI technology Fundamentals, Practice, and
modeling, Prentice Hall.
Stephen Campbell, Fabrication Engineering at the
Micro- and Nanoscale, 4th edition, Oxford Press, and
J M Rabaey, A. Chandrakasan, B. Nikolic, Digital
Integrated Circuits A Design Perspective, 2nd edition,
1999
Software's : Electric (with LT Spice) layout simulator,
SUPREM IV process simulator.
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Evaluation

Assignment and in-class activities 10 %

Mini project 10 %
Quizzes 20 %
Midterm Exam 30 %
Final Exam 30 %
Total - 100 %

If any of the tasks are found to be plagiarized, the

matter will be forwarded to the Dean and
Director.
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 A VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) system

integrates millions of electronic components
in a small area (few mm2 few cm2).
Class objective: Learn how to design
efficient VLSI systems that implement
required functionalities.

Design Criteria

Circuit Speed / Performance

Power consumption
Design Area
Yield

What are VLSI system composed of ?

1.Transistors

2. Wires

nMOS

design

pMOS

Circuits

CMOS logic gates

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wires

transistors
Side view image of a chip

Invention began the electronics revolution with

many integrated circuits in 1 electronic package

The most remarkable aspect of fabrication

technology is the capability of packing a large #
of functions into a physically small area.
Packing density: Small scale integration SSI (1015 devices/chip), MSI (>100), LSI (>1000), VLSI
(>100,000), ULSI (>1,000,000 devices/chip)

Technology scaling
If a pond lily doubles everyday and it takes 30 days to completely cover a
pond, on what day will the pond be 1/2 covered?
Moores Law. The number of transistors in an integrated
circuit doubles every 2 years.

Quad core from

Intel: ~600
million
transistors in
286 mm2
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Why VLSI systems are important

They are ubiquitous in our daily lives
(computers/iPods/TVs/Cars//etc).
ESD503 and other courses can help you understand the devices you use.

The market for VLSI systems (and semiconductors) is worth

$250 billion dollars.

VLSI design and fabrication is fun!

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Semiconductor companies

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What does it take to design VLSI systems? Same engineering

principles you learned so far
1. idea (need)

3. design
system

4. analyze/
model
system

if satisfactory

2. write
specifications

5. Fabrication
6. test / work as
modeled?

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Applications/Ideas

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Specifications
Instruction set

Interface (I/O pins)

Organization of the system
Functionality of each unit in the
and how it to communicate to
other unit

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Design and Analysis

VHDL / Verilog / SystemC

Verification
compilation/
synthesis

mask layout patterns

find wire routes

design schematics

device layout

Design development is facilitated using Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tools15

Fabrication
tapeout

mask layout patterns

mask writer

printing

test and
packaging

chip

masks

dice

die

wafer
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Cleanroom classes in IC fabrication

Cleanrooms are classified according to the number
and size of particles per volume of air.
class numbers denote the number of sub-micron
particles per ft3.
Ordinary room air is approximately class 1,000,000

University of Arkansas Cleanroom

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Available design tools

Cadence design tools in HiDES lab.
Mentor-graphics tools in HiDES lab.
Xlinix Spartan FPGA tools in CEEMS lab.

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IIIT-B manufacturing facilities

Thermal and Ebeam

evaporator

Agilent semiconductor
analyzer with Cascode probe
station

Carl Zeiss Optical microscope, pH meter, weighing meter

3D Makerbot Printer

Fume hood

www.iiitb.ac.in/hides/hides
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IISc and IIT-Bombay facilities

http://www.cense.iisc.ernet.in/infrastructure.htm
http://www.inup.iitb.ac.in/inup/index.php

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Evaluate design (Post silicon validation)

Check signal integrity
Power consumption
Input/output behavior

Does the chip function as it is

supposed to be?
Does it work at desired clock
frequency? (can we overclock?)

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Simple circuit design

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Process flow for fabricating simple

circuit

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Statement in the book

Manufacturers introduce new process
generation every 2-3 years with a 30% smaller
feature size to pack twice as many transistors
in the same area !!
Is the statement mathematically valid ?
Moores law says that every 24-26 months,
number of transistors are doubled, so feature
size should decrease by 30 % ?
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Assignment-1(6 points)
1. Design your metal patterns in terms of material, length, width, and
thickness for developing a circuit shown in slide 22. Mention the
dimensions and material clearly in your drawing.
2. Capture different types of silicon wafers of 4 inch diameter and state the
significance of flat side wherever it is located on the wafer.

3. Design an R L C series circuit for values of 1K, 1 mH and 1F. For planar
spiral inductor you can refer the article uploaded in LMS.

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