A systematic description of microelectronic device design. Topics range from the basics to low-power and ultralow-voltage designs, subthreshold current reduction, memory subsystem designs for modern DRAMs, and various on-chip supply-voltage conversion techniques. It also covers process and device issues as well as design issues relating to systems, circuits, devices and processes, such as signal-to-noise and redundancy.

Now in a thoroughly revised second edition, this practical practitioner guide provides a comprehensive overview of the SoC design process. It explains end-to-end system on chip (SoC) design processes and includes updated coverage of design methodology, the design environment, EDA tool flow, design decisions, choice of design intellectual property (IP) cores, sign-off procedures, and design infrastructure requirements. The second edition provides new information on SOC trends and updated design cases. Coverage also includes critical advanced guidance on the latest UPF-based low power design flow, challenges of deep submicron technologies, and 3D design fundamentals, which will prepare the readers for the challenges of working at the nanotechnology scale. A Practical Approach to VLSI System on Chip (SoC) Design: A Comprehensive Guide, Second Edition provides engineers who aspire to become VLSI designers with all the necessary information and details of EDA tools. It will be a valuable professional reference for those working on VLSI design and verification portfolios in complex SoC designs

A modern, comprehensive introduction to DRAM for students and practicing chip designers Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) technology has been one of the greatestdriving forces in the advancement of solid-state technology. With its ability to produce high product volumes and low pricing, it forces solid-state memory manufacturers to work aggressively to cut costs while maintaining, if not increasing, their market share. As a result, the state of the art continues to advance owing to the tremendous pressure to get more memory chips from each silicon wafer, primarily through process scaling and clever design. From a team of engineers working in memory circuit design, DRAM Circuit Design gives students and practicing chip designers an easy-to-follow, yet thorough, introductory treatment of the subject. Focusing on the chip designer rather than the end user, this volume offers expanded, up-to-date coverage of DRAM circuit design by presenting both standard and high-speed implementations. Additionally, it explores a range of topics: the DRAM array, peripheral circuitry, global circuitry and considerations, voltage converters, synchronization in DRAMs, data path design, and power delivery. Additionally, this up-to-date and comprehensive book features topics in high-speed design and architecture and the ever-increasing speed requirements of memory circuits. The only book that covers the breadth and scope of the subject under one cover, DRAM Circuit Design is an invaluable introduction for students in courses on memory circuit design or advanced digital courses in VLSI or CMOS circuit design. It also serves as an essential, one-stop resource for academics, researchers, and practicing engineers.

This book describes the various tradeoffs systems designers face when designing embedded memory. Readers designing multi-core systems and systems on chip will benefit from the discussion of different topics from memory architecture, array organization, circuit design techniques and design for test. The presentation enables a multi-disciplinary approach to chip design, which bridges the gap between the architecture level and circuit level, in order to address yield, reliability and power-related issues for embedded memory.

This book pioneers the field of gain-cell embedded DRAM (GC-eDRAM) design for low-power VLSI systems-on-chip (SoCs). Novel GC-eDRAMs are specifically designed and optimized for a range of low-power VLSI SoCs, ranging from ultra-low power to power-aware high-performance applications. After a detailed review of prior-art GC-eDRAMs, an analytical retention time distribution model is introduced and validated by silicon measurements, which is key for low-power GC-eDRAM design. The book then investigates supply voltage scaling and near-threshold voltage (NTV) operation of a conventional gain cell (GC), before presenting novel GC circuit and assist techniques for NTV operation, including a 3-transistor full transmission-gate write port, reverse body biasing (RBB), and a replica technique for optimum refresh timing. Next, conventional GC bitcells are evaluated under aggressive technology and voltage scaling (down to the subthreshold domain), before novel bitcells for aggressively scaled CMOS nodes and soft-error tolerance as presented, including a 4-transistor GC with partial internal feedback and a 4-transistor GC with built-in redundancy.

Low Power Design Methodologies presents the first in-depth coverage of all the layers of the design hierarchy, ranging from the technology, circuit, logic and architectural levels, up to the system layer. The book gives insight into the mechanisms of power dissipation in digital circuits and presents state of the art approaches to power reduction. Finally, it introduces a global view of low power design methodologies and how these are being captured in the latest design automation environments. The individual chapters are written by the leading researchers in the area, drawn from both industry and academia. Extensive references are included at the end of each chapter. Audience: A broad introduction for anyone interested in low power design. Can also be used as a text book for an advanced graduate class. A starting point for any aspiring researcher.

This practical, tool-independent guide to designing digital circuits takes a unique, top-down approach, reflecting the nature of the design process in industry. Starting with architecture design, the book comprehensively explains the why and how of digital circuit design, using the physics designers need to know, and no more.

System-on-a-chip (SoC) designs result in a wide range of high-complexity, high-value semiconductor products. As the technology scales towards smaller feature sizes and chips grow larger, a speed limitation arises due to an in creased RC delay associated with interconnection wires. Innovative circuit techniques are required to achieve the speed needed for high-performance signal processing. Current sensing is considered as a promising circuit class since it is inherently faster than conventional voltage sense amplifiers. How ever, especially in SRAM, current sensing has rarely been used so far. Practi cal implementations are challenging because they require sophisticated analog circuit techniques in a digital environment. The objective of this book is to provide a systematic and comprehen sive insight into current sensing techniques. Both theoretical and practical aspects are covered. Design guidelines are derived by systematic analysis of different circuit principles. Innovative concepts like compensation of the bit line multiplexer and auto-power-down will be explained based on theory and experimental results. The material will be interesting for design engineers in industry as well as researchers who want to learn about and apply current sensing techniques. The focus is on embedded SRAM but the material presented can be adapted to single-chip SRAM and to any other current-providing memory type as well. This includes emerging memory technologies like magnetic RAM (MRAM) and Ovonic Unified Memory (OUM). Moreover, it is also applicable to array like structures such as CMOS camera chips and to circuits for signal trans mission along highly capacitive busses.

The modern electronic testing has a forty year history. Test professionals hold some fairly large conferences and numerous workshops, have a journal, and there are over one hundred books on testing. Still, a full course on testing is offered only at a few universities, mostly by professors who have a research interest in this area. Apparently, most professors would not have taken a course on electronic testing when they were students. Other than the computer engineering curriculum being too crowded, the major reason cited for the absence of a course on electronic testing is the lack of a suitable textbook. For VLSI the foundation was provided by semiconductor device techn- ogy, circuit design, and electronic testing. In a computer engineering curriculum, therefore, it is necessary that foundations should be taught before applications. The field of VLSI has expanded to systems-on-a-chip, which include digital, memory, and mixed-signalsubsystems. To our knowledge this is the first textbook to cover all three types of electronic circuits. We have written this textbook for an undergraduate “foundations” course on electronic testing. Obviously, it is too voluminous for a one-semester course and a teacher will have to select from the topics. We did not restrict such freedom because the selection may depend upon the individual expertise and interests. Besides, there is merit in having a larger book that will retain its usefulness for the owner even after the completion of the course. With equal tenacity, we address the needs of three other groups of readers.