Course Title and Code
VLSI Design (EE5011)
Programme
M.Tech
Course Credit
3-0-2-4 (Lecture-Tutorial-Practical-Total Credits)
Course Category
PMT
Prerequisite
Digital Systems
Consent of Teacher
No
Course Description
This course will introduce the design and implementation issues of IC Design. The course emphasizes the key factors for modern chip design: delay, power, interconnect, and robustness. This course focuses on building an understanding of integrated circuits from the bottom up from a fundamental understanding of circuit and physical design.
Course Content
| S/N | Topic | Lecture Hours | Lab Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fundamentals: Motivation and scope of the course; General overview of design hierarchy, layers of abstraction, VLSI design styles, packaging styles, design automation principles, process variation and robustness; VLSI Scaling issues | 4 | 0 |
| 2 | CMOS inverter Characteristics: DC transfer characteristics, noise margins, linear delay model and logical effort, timing analysis delay models; Interconnect modelling, logical effort with wires; CMOS inverter layout and circuit simulation | 9 | 6 |
| 3 | CMOS Power Consumption: Dynamic power, static power, energy-delay optimization, pipelining, parallel processing low power design techniques, overview of circuit families | 9 | 8 |
| 4 | System design issues: Design of arithmetic building blocks adders and multipliers, barrel and logarithmic shifters; sequential design issues, max-delay/min-delay constraints, time borrowing, clock skew, characterizing sequencing element methodology, multiple clock domains and synchronizers, FIFO design, Verilog design examples. | 10 | 10 |
| 5 | Memory and I/O design: Dynamic Random-Access Memories (DRAM), Static RAM, non-volatile memories, flash memories, low-power memory; Robust memory design, power distribution, clock distribution, I/O and high-speed links. | 10 | 4 |
| Total | 42 | 28 |
Learning Outcomes
- Understand the VLSI design flow starting from architecture design, microarchitecture design, logic design, circuit design, and finally physical design.
- Understand the area-power-speed tradeoffs involved in designing a modern IC.
- Be familiar with the effect of this feature size scaling on chip performance and design methodologies.
Teaching Methodology
Classroom lectures and Lab exercises
Assessment Methods
Written examination and continuous lab assessment
Text Books
- Neil Weste and David Harris, CMOS VLSI Design: A Circuits and Systems perspective, Pearson Education India, 4th edition, 2010, ISBN-13: 978-0321547743
- J. M. Rabaey, A. Chandrakasan, and B. Nikolic, Digital Integrated circuits: A design perspective, 2nd Edition, Pearson Education India, 2016, ISBN-13: 978-9332573925