Microelectronics
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Microelectronics deals with design, manufacturing and test of integrated transistor circuits.
At the beginning emphasis was on integrating as many transistors as possible in a small
area achieving high operating speeds (timing closure).
Nowadays in 10 nm technologies manufacturing costs and mask costs are very high
and millions of transistors are available. Focus has changed to identify applications
where millions of chips are needed (mobile phones) and to be able to
build and verify robust circuits with millions of transistors in a short time frame.
Microelectronics maintained a steady 30% productivity gain every 2 years over the last 30 years.
Semiconductor manufacturing is using roadmaps, data collection and analysis (Big Data),
simulation, automation in software and hardware (Industry 4.0) and dedicated
test strategies (Design for test) and verification to be successfull.
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Strategies in microelectronics:
- Realize any solution and optimize later only when needed: Premature optimization is evil.
- Verify each step as soon as possible: Do simulations and manufacturing data measurement
- Use automation and avoid manual work: Manual work adds possible errors and takes fixed amount of time
- Expect 30% productivity increase every year
- Be right on time: Every year a new product generation is needed. Sometimes advanced products fail.
- Reuse circuits and analyze competitors.
- Any task can be divided into smaller tasks hierarchically until a solution is found.
This class presents typical software tools for circuit development and manufacturing processes.
A typical chip development example is done in the laboratory.
Microprocessors are the highest volumne integrated circuits developed mostly by ARM and Intel having
an ARM, Intel, MIPS or RISC architecture.
Processors realized in VHDL are partially available, but there is no open chip design with scan cells.
A MIPS design of harvey mudd college is the most advanced publicly available processor without scan cells.
Graphics processors are a lower volumne product made by Intel, AMD and NVidia.
Microcontrollers are nice mixed signal designs based on ARM processors and availbale from many manufacturers.
Power integrated circuits and discrete devices are important for renewable energies and e-mobility.
A microcontroller as a data logger and electronic laboratory could be a mixed signal target device for this lecture.
Pure digital circuits can nowadays be realized in an FPGA and high level languages such as System C, Matlab Simulink
or Labview can be used.
It would be nice to have these tools:
A JavaScript (language subset) to hardware compiler.
An AOI Schematic to standard cell layout tool for a single schematic cell.
Place and route with more than 2 metal layers.
LTSPICE simulation break up into smaller pieces with delay extraction.
Lecture
31.03.2020
3. MOSFET
Technologies and Systems
MOSFET: IV curves, static equation, layout and cross section
Laboratoy 1/2: Design and simulation of 1 μm and 50 nm
CMOS transistors
Reading:
Video MOSFET 31.03.2020
1.04.2020
4. MOSFET Inverter:
MOSFET as capacitor, MOSFET switch model(R, C),
Inverter, IV curve, propagation delay,
Standard cell, pass gate (PG), transmission gate (TG)
Laboratoy 1/2: Design and simulation of 1μm and 50 nm CMOS transistors
Reading:
Video Inverter 01.04.2020
21.04.2020
8. Silicon Compiler: From VHDL to layout
Unit Transistor,
Cell layout,
System synthesis,
VHDL entity and architecture
Synthesis and silicon compiler
VHDL hardware definition language
Entity, architecture, ports, busses, signals, hierarchy, state machine, test
22.04.2020 Video Laboratory 3/4: A CMOS inverter
Reading:
Video Systems, Synthesis, VHDL 21.04.2020
2.06.2020
14. Review
Example exam
Laboratory: Design of a FPGA
Reading: