Vlsi Final
Vlsi Final
net
ww
w.E
asy
En
gin
e eri
ng.
n et
ww
w.E
asy
En
gin
e eri
ng.
n et
ww
w.E
asy
En
gin
e eri
ng.
n et
ww
w.E
asy
En
gin
e eri
ng.
n et
ww
w.E
asy
En
gin
e eri
ng.
n et
ww
w.E
asy
En
gin
e eri
ng.
n et
ww
w.E
asy
En
gin
e eri
ng.
n et
ww
w.E
asy
En
gin
e eri
ng.
n et
ww
w.E
asy
En
gin
e eri
ng.
n et
ww
w.E
asy
En
gin
e eri
ng.
n et
ww
w.E
asy
En
gin
e eri
ng.
n et
ww
w.E
asy
En
gin
e eri
ng.
n et
EC8095-VLSI DESIGN
UNIT -1
Part – A
Moore’s law states that the number of transistor would double every 18 months.
Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS)in which both n-channel MOS and
p-channel MOS are fabricated in the same IC.
In CMOS technology the aluminum gates of the transistor are replaced by poly
silicon gate.
The main advantage of CMOS over NMOS is low power consumption.
In CMOS technology the device sizes can be easily scalable than NMOS.
Design rules are the communication link between the designer specifying requirements
and the fabricator who materializes them. The design rule conform to a set of geometric
constraints or rule specify the minimum allowable line widths for physical objects on-chip such
as metal and poly silicon interconnects or diffusion area, minimum feature dimensions and
minimum allowable separations between two layers.
7. What is stick diagram ?
Stick diagram are the key element of designing a circuit used to convey layer information
through the use of a color code .
Micron rules specify the layout constraints such as minimum feature sizes and minimum
allowable feature separations are stated in terms of absolute dimensions in micrometers.
Lambda rule specify the layout constraints such as minimum feature sizes and minimum
allowable feature separations are stated in terms of a single parameter (λ) and thus allow linear,
proportional scaling of all geometrical constraints.
Design Rule Check program looks for design rule violations in the layout. It checks for
minimum spacing and minimum size and ensures that combinations of layers from legal
components.
Metal Oxide Semiconductor is a three terminal device having source, drain and gate.
The resistance path between the drain and the source is controlled by applying a voltage
to the gate.
The Normal conduction characteristics of an MOS transistor can be categorized as cut-
off region Non saturated region and saturated region.
NMOS PMOS
The majority carriers are electron The majority carriers are holes
Positive voltage is applied at the gate terminal Negative voltage is applied at the gate terminal
NMOS conducts at logic 1 PMOS conducts at logic 0
Mobility of electron is high Mobility of electron is low
Switching speed is high Switching speed is low
13. Compare enhancement and depletion mode devices ?
Enhancement Depletion
1. No conducting channel between source and channel exists even with zero voltage from
drain unless a positive voltage is applied gate to source. In order to control the
channel a negative voltage is applied to the
gate
2. Enhancement-mode device is equivalent to a Depletion-mode device is equivalent to a
normally open (off)switch normally closed (on)switch
It is defined as the minimum voltage at which the device starts conduction (ie) turns on.
Accumulation mode
Depletion mode
Inversion mode
When the gate to source voltage(Vgs) is much less than the threshold voltage (Vt) then it
is termed as the accumulation mode. There is no conduction between source and drain. The
device is turned off.
When the gate to source voltage(Vgs) is increased greater than the threshold voltage (Vt)
the electrons are attracted towards the gate while the holes are repelled causing a depletion
region under the gate. This is called depletion mode.
When Vgs is raised above the Vt the electrons are attracted to the gate region. Under
such a condition the surface of the underlying p-type silicon is said to be a inverted to n-type,
and provides a conduction path between a source and drain. The device is turned on. This is
called inversion mode.
cut-off region
Non saturated region
saturated region.
20. What is cut-off region ?
The region where the current flow is essentially zero is called cut-off region.
(ie) Ids=0, Vgs ≤ Vt.
Weak inversion region where the drain current is dependent on the gate and the drain
voltage is called non saturated region
Channel is strongly inverted and the drain current flow is ideally independent of the
drain-source voltage is called saturated region.
The threshold voltage Vt is constant with respect to voltage difference between source
and the substrate is called body effect.
24. Write the threshold voltage equation including the body effect ?
Vt=Vfb+2 φb+
√ 2 εqNa ( 2 ∅ b+Vsb )
Cox
The threshold voltage of a MOSFET is usually defined as the gate voltage were an
inversion layer form s at the interface between the insulating layer (oxide) and the substrate
(body) of the transistor.
The body effect is change in the threshold voltage by the change in the VSB(the source
bulk voltage). Since the body influences the threshold voltage(when it is not tied to the source), it
can be considered as second gate or back gate.
For enhanceme mode , the n-mos MOSFET body effect upon threshold voltage is given as
Breakdown voltages
Forward transconductance
Drain to source on resistance
Switching characteristics
Zero gate voltage drain current, Idss
Input capacitance,Ciss
Size is less
high speed
low power consumption
1. Discuss in detail with a neat layout, the design rules for a CMOS inverter.
2. Discuss in detail with necessary equation the operation of MOSFET and its current
voltage characteristics.
3. Draw and explain the D.C and transfer characteristics of a CMOS inverter with a
necessary conditions for the different regions of operation.
4. Discuss the principle of constant field scaling and also write its effect on device
characteristics.
5. Explain the small signal model of MOS transistors with neat diagram and expression.
6. Draw the stick diagram and layout of a NMOS inverter.
UNIT -2
PART –A
Static power dissipation (due to leakage current when the circuit is idle).
Dynamic power dissipation(when the circuit is switching) and
Short –circuit power dissipation during switching of transistors.
4. What is static power dissipation ?
Power dissipation due to leakage current when the idle is called the static power
dissipation. Static power due to
Power dissipation is due to circuit switching to charge and discharge the output load
capacitance at a particular node at operating frequency is called Dynamic power dissipation.
1. By selecting multi threshold voltages on circuit paths with low-Vt transistors while
leakage on other paths with high-Vt transistors.
2. By using two operating modes, active and standby for each function blocks.
3. By adjusting the body bias (i.e) adjusting FBB (Forward Body Bias) in active mode to
increase performance and RBB (Reverse Body Bias) in standby mode to reduce leakage.
4. By using sleep transistors to isolate the supply from the block to achieve significant
leakage power savings.
During switching, both NMOS and PMOS transistors will conduct simultaneously and
provide a direct path between Vdd and the ground rail resulting in short circuit power
dissipation
9. Define design margin ?
The additional performance capability above required standard basic system parameters
that may be specified by a system designer to compensate for uncertainties is called design
margin. Design margin required as there are three sources of variation- two environmental and
one manufacturing.
It is a MOS transistor, in which gate is driven by a control signal the source (out), the
drain of the transistor is called constant or variable voltage potential(in) when the control signal
is high, input is passed to the output and when the control signal is low, the output is floating
topology such topology circuits is called pass transistor.
Pass transistor logic (PTL) circuits are often superior to standard CMOS circuits in terms
of layout density, circuit delay and power consumption.
They do not have path VDD to GND and do not dissipate standby power(static power
dissipation).
The circuit constructed with the parallel connection of PMOS and NMOS with shorted
drain and source terminals. The gate terminal uses two select signals s and s, when s is high than
the transmission gates passes the signal on the input. The main advantage of transmission gate is
that it eliminates the threshold voltage drop.
14. why low power has become an important issue in the present day VLSI circuit realization?
Indeep submicron technology the power has become as one of the most important issue
because of:
greater device leakage current;in nanometer technology the leakage component become a
significant percentage of the total ower and the leakage current increases at a faster rate then
dynamic power in technology generations.
15. what are the various ways to reduce the delay time of a CMOS inverter ?
Various ways for reducing the delay time are given below:
a) the width of the MOS transistor can be increased to reduce delay.this is known as gate
sizing,which will be discussed later in moredetails.
b) the load capacitance can be reduced to reduce delay.this is achivedby using transistor of
smaller and smaller dimension by feature generation technology.
c) delay can also be reduced by increasing the supply voltage Vdd and/or reducing the
threshold voltage Vt of the MOS transistors
the operation of the circuit can be explained using precharge logic in which the output is
precharged to HIGH level during Φ2 clockand the output is evaluated during Φ1 clock.
17. what makes dynamic CMOS circuits faster than static CMOS circuits ?
Because of finite delay of the gates used to realize boolean functions,different signals
cannot reach the inputs of a gate simultaneously.this leads to spurious transition at the output
before it settles down to its final value.the spurious transitions leads to charging and discharging
of the outputs causing glitching power dissipation. It can be minimized by having balanced
realization having same delay at the inputs.
20. Compare and contrast clock gating versus power gating approaches.
PART – B
1. Discuss in detail about the ratioed circuit and dynamic circuit CMOS logic
configurations
2. Describe the basic principle of operation of dynamic CMOS ,domino and NP domino
logic with neat diagrams.
3. Explain the static and dynamic power dissipation in CMOS circuits with necessary
diagrams and expressions.
4. Discuss the design techniques to reduce switching activity in a static and dynamic CMOS
circuits.
5. Briefly discuss about the classification of circuit families and comparison of circuit
families.
UNIT -3
PART – A
A static CMOS circuit is a combination of two networks – the pull-up network (PUN)
and the pull-down network (PDN) in which at every point in time, each gate output is connected
to either VDD or VSS via a low resistance line.
At any instant of time, the output of the gate is directly connected to VDD and VSS.
The function of the PUN is provide a connection between the output and VDD.
The function of the PDN is provide a connection between the output and VSS .
Both PDN and PUN are constructed in mutually exclusive way such that one and only
one of the networks is conducting in steady state. That is, the output node is always a
low-impedance node in steady state.
Dynamic circuits rely on the temporary storage of signal values on the capacitance of
high impedance node.
A fundamental difficulty with dynamic circuits is a loss of noise immunity and a serious
timing restriction on the inputs of the gate.
Violate monotonicity during evaluation phase.
A static CMOS inverter placed between dynamic gates which eliminate the monotonicity
problem in dynamic circuits are called CMOS Domino logic.
A sequencing element with static storage employs some sort of feedback to retain its
output value indefinitely.
A sequencing element with dynamic storage generally maintain its value as charge on a
capacitor that will leak away if not refreshed for a long period of time.
In reality clocks have some uncertainty in their arrival times that can cut into the time
available for useful computation is called clock skew.
11. What is the difference between melay and moore state machines?
In the melay state machine we can calculate the next state and output both from the input
and state. But in the moore state machine we can calculate only next state but not output from the
input and the state and the output is issued according to next state.
Propagation delay(t pd): The amount of time needed for a change in a logic input to result
in a permanent change at an output,that is the combinational logic will not show any further
output changes in response to an input change alter time fod units
contamination delay(tea): The amount of time needed for a change in a logic input to
result in an initial change at an output, that is the combinational logic is guaranteed not to show
any output change in response to an input change before fed time units have passed.
Setup time (t setup): The amount of time before the clock edge that data input D must be stable
the rising clock edge arrives.
Hold time (t hold): This indicates the amount of time after the clock edge arrives the data input
D must be held stable in order for FF to latch the correct value. Hold time is always measured
from the rising clock edge to a point after the clock edge.
2. A latch stores when the clock A FF stores when the clock rises
level is low and is transparent and is mostly never transparent.
when the level is high.
Pipelining is a popular design technique often used to accelerate the operation of the data
path in digital processors. The major advantages of pipelinig are to reduce glitching in complex
logic networks and getting lower energy due to operand isolation.
16. How the limitations of a ROM-based realization is overcome in a PLA-based realization.
In a ROM, the encoder part is only programmable and use of ROMs to realize Boolean
functions is wasteful in many situations because there is no cross-connect for a significant part.
This wastage can be overcome by using Programmable Logic Array(PLA), which requires much
lesser chip area.
Both SRAMs and DRAMs are volatile in nature, ie. Information is lost if power line is
removed. However SRAMs provide high switching speed, good noise margin but require large
chip area than DRAMs.
18. Explain the read and write operations for a one-transistor DRAM cell.
A significant improvement in the DRAM evolution was to realize 1-T DRAM cell. One
additional capacitor is explicitly fabricated for storage purpose. To store 'I', it is charged to store
'0' it is discharged to '0' volt. Read operation is destructive. Sense amplifier is needed for reading.
Read operation is followed by restoration operation.
MTBF=(1/P(failure)) = ( Ti e(Ti=tsetup/ti)/Nto)
20. what do you meant by Max delay constraint and Min delay constraint ?
Min delay constraint: the path begins with the rising edge of the clock triggering F1. The data
may begin to change at Q1 after a clk-to-Q contamination delay. However, it must not reach D2
until at least the hold after the clock edge, lest it corrupt the contents of F2. Hence, we solve for
minimum logic contamination delay :
Max delay constraint : the path begins with the rising edge of the clock triggering F1. The data
must propagate to the output of the flipflop Q1 and through the combinational logic to D2,
setting up at F2 before the next rising clock edge. Under ideal conditions, the worst case
propagation delays determine the minimum clock period for this sequential circuitry
PART – B
PART – A
A data path is best implemented in a bit –sliced fashion. A single layout is used
respectively for every bit in the data word. This regular approach eases the design effort and
results in fast and dense layouts.
A ripple carry adder has a performance that is linearly proportional to the number of bits.
Circuit optimizations concentrate on reducing the delay of the carry path. A number of circuit
topologies exist providing that careful optimization of the circuit topology and the transistor
sizes helps to reduce the capacitance on the carry bit.
Other adder structures use logic optimizations to increase the performance (carry bypass,
carry select, carry lookahead). Performance increase comes at the cost area.
A multiplier is nothing more than a collection of cascaded adders. Critical path is far
more complex and optimizations are different compared to adders.
The performance and the area of a programmable shifter are dominated by the wiring.
A datapath is a functional units, such as arithmetic logic units or multipliers, that perform
data processing operations, registers and buses. Along with the control unit it composes the
central processing unit.
t = (n-1)tc+ts
8. Write down the expression to obtain delay for N-bit carry bypass adder.
The simplest multiplier is the Braun multiplier. All the partial products are computed in
parallel, and then collected through a cascade of Carry Save Adders. The completion time is
limited by the depth of the carry save array, and by the carry propagation in the adder. This
multiplier is suitable for positive operands.
Booth algorithm is a method that will reduce the number of multiplicand multiples. For a
given number of ranges to be represented , a higher representation radix leads to fewer digits.
Array shifter
Barrel shifter
Logarithm shifter
PART – B
3. what is 4*4 carry save multiplier. Calculate its critical path delay
4. Explain the following circuits 1. Data path circuit 2. Any one adder circuit
7. describe about carry look-ahead adder and its carry generation and propogation.
UNIT – 5
IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES
PART – A
1. Differentiate between channeled and channel less gate array.
The programmable logic plane is programmable read only memory(PROM) array that
allows the signals present on the devices pins to be routed to an output logic macro cell.
In a Full custom ASIC, an engineer designs some or all of the logic cells, circuits or
layout specifically for one ASIC. It makes sense to take this approach only if there are no
suitable existing cell libraries available that can be used for the entire design.
A cell-based ASIC (CBIC) uses predefined logic cells known as STANDARD CELLS.
The standard cell areas are also called flexible block in a CBIC are built of rows of standard
cells. The ASIC designer defines only the placement of standard cells and the interconnect in a
CBIC. All the mask layers of a CBIC are customized and are unique to a particular customer.
1. Fusible links
2. UV-erasable EPROM
3. EEPROM(E2PROM) – Electrically Erasable Programmable ROM.
17.What is an antifuse ?
1. Design entry
2. Logic synthesis system partitioning
3. Prelayout simulation
4. Floor planning
5. Placement
6. Routing
7. Extraction
8. Post layout simulation
PART – B
1.Explain the general architecture of FPGA and bring about different programmable blocks used.
2.Discuss in detail about full custom design and semi custom design.