BASIC VLSI DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

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TEXT BOOKS:
1. D A Pucknell and K Eshraghian “Basic VLSI Design” –
Prentice-Hall, 2006.
2. Kang & Leblebigi “CMOS Digital IC Circuit Analysis &
Design”- McGraw Hill, 2003.
3. J M Rabaey, “Digital Integrated Circuits Design”, Pearson
Education, Second Edition, 2003.

References:
• N. Weste and K. Eshraghian, “Principles of CMOS VLSI
design” Addison-Wesley, 2002.

• Additional reading from selected journals / papers.

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 Why do We Want to Design
VLSI Circuit?

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Answer :

• Realization of complex circuits using discrete

devises are difficult and costly too.
• ICs solve this problem by printing all small circuits
on single flat surface.
•This reduces the cost because cost depends upon
die size.

Thus VLSI design manages complexity and helps to

simplify the complex design problems.
It determines efficient solutions in terms of area,
power, time and performance.
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 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW: ERA of ICs

• 1954, 1st Silicon Transistor, cost $2.50.

• 1961, 1st IC( FF circuit), cost $50.

• 1961-1966 : SSI era, 90-150 Tr/C, FF, Gates.

• 1967-1971 : MSI, 100-1000 Tr/C, Adders,
counters and 1K RAM chip by Intel.

• 1972-1978 : LSI, 1K-20K Tr/C, 4-8bit µPs, ROM.

• 1978-1988 : VLSI, 20K-500K Tr/C, 16-32bit µPs,
sophisticated peripherals.

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 Technology Trends

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 Power will be a major problem
10000
0 18KW
1000 5KW
0 1.5KW
100 500W
0 Pentium®
10
(Watts)

proc
Power

0 28 48
1 808 6 38
8086 6
0 808 6
800 5
1 400 0
8
4
0.
1 197 197 197 198 199 200 200 200
1 4 8 5 Year2 0 4 8
Power delivery and dissipation will be
prohibitive
Courtesy, Intel
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 Logic Transistor per Chip (M)
Productivity Trends
10,000,000 100,000,000
Logic Tr./Chip
1,000,000 10,000,000
Tr./Staff Month.

(K) Trans./Staff - Mo.

100,000 1,000,000
Complexity

10,000 100,000

Productivity
1,000 10,000
x x
100 xx 1,000
xx x
x
10 100

1 10
1981
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
Source: Sematech

Complexity outpaces design productivity

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Many disciplines have contributed to the
current state of art in VLSI design:

• Solid-state physics.
• Materials science.
• Lithography and fab.
• Device modeling.

• Architecture.
• Algorithms.
• CAD tools.
• Circuit design & layout.
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 Lets get started…

• We will review (learn for first time?) MOS

physics.

• Why MOSFET’s?
– CMOS circuits dissipate power only when switching
(they do use power when not switching, but is much
less than other circuits).

– This allows for more circuits to be placed on one die.

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 VLSI Design Flow

Definitions and Terminology:

• Abstraction; refinement.

• Extraction ; generation.

Design process traverses iteratively among three

domains shown in Gajski Y chart.

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 Abstraction

Extraction

Refinement

Generation

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 SIMPLIFIED VLSI DESIGN FLOW VIEW IN
THREE DOMAINS

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 VLSI Chip Design Styles

• Gate Array Technology, FPGA.

• Standard Cell Design Technology.

• Full Custom Mask Design.

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 FULL CUSTOM DESIGN

• Complete fabrication process.

• Manual design.
• Total flexibility, only limited by layout
rules.
• Very High Development Cost – Smallest
Die area.
Features:

• Long design and fabrication time.

• Efficient use of silicon area.
• Cheap only at highest quantities.
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 FULL CUSTOM DESIGN

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 CAD Technology

• High level Synthesis.

• Logic Synthesis.
• Circuit Optimization.
• Layout.
• Simulation.
• DRC.
• Formal Verification.

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