SUBJECT: DSD USING VERILOG

SUBJECT CODE: 18EC46

Module 1

Design Concepts :
• Digital Hardware
• The design Process
• Design of Digital Hardware
• Introduction to CAD tools
• Standard Chips
• Programmable Logic Devices
• Custom Chips and Gate arrays
• Introduction to Verilog
• What is Verilog HDL
• History
• Major capabilities
ADVENT OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS

Semiconductors in everyday life

Digital Hardware: The Design Process

• Logic circuits are used to build computer hardware, as well as many other types of products. All such products are
broadly classified as digital hardware.

MOORE’S LAW
Moore’s law was coined in 1965 by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore that the number of transistors placed in an
Integrated Circuit (IC) or chip doubles approximately every two years.
History of semiconductors
FROM SAND TO SILICON: THE MAKING OF A CHIP Silicon is the second most abundant
element in the earth’s crust.
Common sand has a high percentage
of silicon. Silicon—the starting
material for computer chips—is a
semiconductor, meaning that it can be
readily turned into an excellent
conductor or an insulator of
electricity, by the introduction of
minor amounts of impurities

Melted silicon. In order to be used for computer chips,

silicon must be purified so there is less than one alien
atom per billion. It is pulled from a melted state to form a
solid which is a single, continuous and unbroken crystal
lattice in the shape of a cylinder, known as an ingot.

A mono-crystal silicon ingot has a diameter of 300

millimeters (mm) and weighs about 100 kilograms
(roughly 220 pounds).
Ingot slicing: The ingot is cut into individual
silicon discs called wafers. Each wafer has a
diameter of 300mm and is about 1 mm thick.

Wafers are polished until they have flawless,

mirror-smooth surfaces. Intel buys
manufacturing-ready wafers from its
suppliers. Wafer sizes have increased over
time, resulting in decreased costs per chip.
When Intel began making chips, wafers were
only 50mm in diameter. Today they are
300mm, and the industry has a plan to
advance to 450mm.
Applying photo resist (wafer level). Photolithography is
the process by which a specific pattern is imprinted on the
wafer. It starts with the application of a liquid known as
photoresist, which is evenly poured onto the wafer while it
spins. It gets its name from the fact that it is sensitive to
certain frequencies of light (“photo”) and is resistant to
certain chemicals that will be used later to remove
portions of a layer of material (“resist”).
 Begin transistor formation. Here
we zoom into a tiny part of the
wafer, where a single transistor will
be formed. The green region
represents doped silicon. Today’s
Ion Implantation. The wafer with patterned photoresist is wafers can have hundreds of
bombarded with a beam of ions (positively or negatively billions of such regions which will
charged atoms) which become embedded beneath the house transistors.
surface in the regions not covered by photoresist. This
process is called doping, because impurities are
introduced into the silicon. This alters the conductive
properties of the silicon (making it conductive or
insulating, depending on the type of ion used) in selected
locations. Here we show the creation of wells, which are
regions within which transistors will be formed.
Etch. In order to create a fin for a tri-
gate transistor, a pattern of material
called a hard mask (blue) is applied
using the photolithography process just
described. Then a chemical is applied to
etch away unwanted silicon, leaving
behind a fin with a layer of hard mask on
top.
Types of Chips:
• Standard Chips
• Programmable Logic Devices
• Custom-Designed Chips
The Design Process
A Silicon Wafer
 ITRS
•A consortium of integrated circuit associations produces a forecast of how the technology is
expected to evolve. Known as the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS)
this forecast discusses many aspects of technology, including the maximum number of
transistors that can be manufactured on a single chip.

• Data from ITRS.

• The designer of digital hardware may be faced with designing logic circuits that can be
implemented on a single chip or designing circuits that involve a number of chips placed
on a Printed Circuit Board (PCB).

• Frequently, some of the logic circuits can be realized in existing chips that are readily available.
This situation simplifies the design task and shortens the time needed to develop the final product.

• There exists a large variety of chips that implement various functions that are useful
in the design of digital hardware.

•The chips range from simple ones with low functionality to extremely complex chips.

•Examples of digital chips are microprocessor to perform some arithmetic operations, memory chips
to provide storage capability, and interface chips that allow easy connection to input and output
devices.

• For many digital hardware products, it is also necessary to design and build some logic circuits from
scratch. For implementing these circuits, three main types of chips may be used: standard chips,
programmable logic devices, and custom chips.
 Standard Chips
• Standard Chips are those which are readily available and realize some commonly used logic circuits.

They are named as “standard” because they conform to an agreed-upon standard in terms of functionality
and physical configuration.

Each standard chip contains a small amount of circuitry (usually involving fewer than 100 transistors) and
performs a simple function.

To build a logic circuit, the designer chooses the chips that perform whatever functions are needed and
then defines how these chips should be interconnected to realize a larger logic circuit.

The main disadvantage of standard chips is that the functionality of each chip is fixed and cannot be
changed.
 Programmable Logic Devices
• It is possible to construct chips that contain circuitry which can be configured by the user to
implement a wide range of different logic circuits.

• PLDs have a very general structure and include a collection of programmable switches that allow
the internal circuitry in the chip to be configured in many different ways.

• The designer can implement whatever functions are required for a particular application by setting
the programmable switches as needed. The switches are programmed by the end user, rather than
when the chip is manufactured.

• PLDs are available in a wide range of sizes, and can be used to implement very large logic circuits.
The most commonly-used type of PLD is known as a field-programmable gate array (FPGA).

• The largest FPGAs contain billions of transistors and support the implementation of complex
digital systems. An FPGA consists of a large number of small logic circuit elements, which can be
connected together by using programmable switches in the FPGA.

• Because of their high capacity, and their capability to be tailored to meet the requirements of a
specific application, FPGAs are widely used today.
 Custom Designed Chips
• However, they also have a drawback in that the programmable switches consume valuable chip area and
limit the speed of operation of implemented circuits. Thus in some cases FPGAs may not meet the desired
performance or cost objectives.

•In such situations it is possible to design a chip from scratch; namely, the logic circuitry that must be
included on the chip is designed first and then the chip is manufactured by a company that has the
fabrication facilities. This approach is known as custom or semi-custom design, and such chips are often
called application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).

• The main advantage of a custom chip is that its design can be optimized for a specific task; hence it usually
leads to better performance. It is possible to include a larger amount of logic circuitry in a custom chip than
would be possible in other types of chips.

• The cost of producing such chips is high, but if they are used in a product that is sold in large quantities,
then the cost per chip, amortized over the total number of chips fabricated, may be lower than the total cost
of off-the-shelf chips that would be needed to implement the same function(s).

• Moreover, if a single chip can be used instead of multiple chips to achieve the same goal, then a smaller
area is needed on a PCB that houses the chips in the final product. This results in a further reduction in cost.
 Custom Designed Chips (Continued)

•A disadvantage of the custom-design approach is that manufacturing a custom chip often takes a
considerable amount of time, on the order of months. In contrast, if an FPGA can be used instead,
then the chips are programmed by the end user and no manufacturing delays are involved.
 Design of a Digital Hardware Unit
• The first figure is a PCB is a part of a large computer system designed at the University of Toronto. The
computer is called NUMAchine. It is a multi-processor, which means that it contains many processors that
can be used together to work on a particular task.

• The PCB in the figure contains one processor chip and various memory and support chips.

• The next figure shows the design flow needed to produce a digital hardware unit that can be
implemented on a PCB.

• The third figure shows the steps needed to implement a prototype board.
 Introduction to Verilog
• Verilog HDL is a hardware description language that can be used to model a digital system at many levels of
abstraction ranging from the algorithmic level to the gate level to the switch level.

• The complexity of the digital system being modeled could vary from that of a simple gate to a complete
electronic digital system or anything in between.

• The language not only defines the syntax but also defines very clear simulation semantics for each language
construct. Hence, models written in this language can be verified using a verilog simulator.

• The language inherits many of its operator symbols and constructs from the ‘C’ programming language.

• The complete language has sufficient capabilities to capture the descriptions from the most complex chips
to a complete electronic system.
 History of Verilog

• Verilog was developed by Gateway Design Automation in 1983 as a hardware modeling language for
their simulator product. At that time, it was a proprietary language.

• But the language was placed in the public domain in 1990 and Open Verilog International (OVI) was
formed to promote verilog and many standards were proposed.

• A new version of the language was standardized in 2001 called IEEE Std 1364-2001 which included
many new features.