Credits: 3
Semesters Offered
Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024Learning Objectives
- Consolidate and apply key concepts in semiconductor devices, analog circuits and digital circuits introduced earlier in the electrical and computer engineering curricula
- Select appropriate design problems, partition and distribute design tasks within each team
- Analyze, design, and optimize complex CMOS integrated circuits including: DC, transient and small signal responses; phase margin, gain, and frequency response trade-offs of op-amps; optimal fan-out and minimum propagation delay of digital circuits
- Use Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tools such as circuit simulators to confirm analysis and predict performance, layout tools to implement circuit designs on a silicon chip, and verification tools to ensure that the design satisfies design rules and implements the desired circuit;and
- Understand how semiconductor physics influences chip design rules and sets limits on integrated circuit performance.
Topics Covered
- CMOS IC design and fabrication
- CAD tools including schematic capture, circuit simulator, layout editor, DRC, LVS
- Designing and laying out the integrated circuit well
- Metal layers, pads, and interconnects
- Design and layout of active and polysilicon layers
- MOSFET design, fabrication, and operation
- Parasitic elements due to layout and device structure, and the resulting RC delay and inductive cross talk
- Digital CMOS circuits: the operation and layout of the inverter, nand, and, nor gates
- Advanced circuit simulation
- Analog CMOS circuits: the operation and layout of current sources, differential amplifiers, active loads, cascode loads, operational amplifiers, frequency compensation, operational transconductance amplifiers
- Mixed-signal circuits for specific applications (e.g., communications)
- Design optimization: minimum propagation delay, optimal fan-out
- Economic motivation for IC circuit fabrication
- Environmental issues in chip fabrication; use and disposal of dangerous chemicals