Through VLSI: A Summary

Vinay Rao
Research Scholar
Email-id: vinaya@iitg.ernet.in
Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology

Guwahati,Assam
6th November, 2014

6th November, 2014 1 /

Guwahati,As
17

Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

Overview

Introduction
VLSI requirement
Design flow
Applications
Circuit design challenges
References

6th November, 2014 2 /

Guwahati,As
17

Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

Miniaturization

VLSI is a process of components miniaturization.

Integrating multiple functionality on a small area.
ENIACs 167 m2 Vs Intel i7 ivy Bridges 160 mm2 .
Less wire delay and consumes less power.
It covers diverse range of applications: Communication, Bio-medical,
Energy harvesting etc.

6th November, 2014 3 /

Guwahati,As
17

Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

VLSI requirement
Skills

Circuits
(Ex:Analog
/Digital)

Application
domain
(Ex:Communication,
Bio-medical
etc)

Simulation
Tools
(Ex:Cadence,
Synopsys
etc)

Design Flow

Figure: Skills required for VLSI design.

Simulation tools verify the functionality.

6th November, 2014 4 /

Guwahati,As
17

Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

VLSI Design Flow

Application
Sp e c

System Architecture

ion

t
ifica

Ex: Superhetrodyne structure

System Budgeting

Ex: Amplifiers
such as class A,
B etc.

Modify/Invent circuits to improve

performance
Simulation verification
Design to Fab Lab
Hardware Testing

Circuit topologies
Ready to Market

Figure: Design flow for VLSI.

Performance distribution is done among N number of components in

system budgeting.
Simulation verification itself involves series of well defined procedures.

6th November, 2014 5 /

Guwahati,As
17

Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

RF and Microwave

Development of millimeter wave or micrometer wave circuits. It may

use CMOS, Si-Ge, BiCMOS etc..
Millimeter or micrometer wave range offers higher data rate and wider
bandwidth [1]
Transceiver component design for operating frequencies more than
100 GHz [2].
These may find application in sensing and imaging applications [2].

6th November, 2014 6 /

Guwahati,As
17

Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

RF and Microwave

Transceivers in 60 GHz band [3], [4].

Implementation of efficient circuits for Software defined radios [5] or
for multi-band radios.
Circuits for Ultra-wide band systems.

6th November, 2014 7 /

Guwahati,As
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Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

Bio-Medical

Figure: BAN to record several physiological signals [6].

Wearable electronics with BAN makes continuous monitoring feasible.

6th November, 2014 8 /

Guwahati,As
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Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

Bio-Medical

Effective sensors are required to extract physiological signals

accurately.
Devices must be small, low powered, and reject noises [7].
Physiological signals are usually low-frequency signals that require
larger passive components.
Lab-On-Chip: Analogy of circuit techniques are used to analyze
fluids [8].

6th November, 2014 9 /

Guwahati,As
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Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

Energy harvesting

A method to extract energy from easily available sources such as

solar, thermal, vibrations etc.
The idea is to avoid the battery or to elong the battery life of the
system using other available external energy sources [9].
Development of multi-input energy harvesting system architecture [9],
installing self starting capabilities, making system more reliable etc.
Improving efficiency of components such as regulators, rectifiers etc.

6th November, 2014 10 /

Guwahati,As
17

Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

Other areas

Signal processing:
Introducing efficient algorithms, development of better architectures,
development of compact RTL codes.

BIST (Built in Self Test):

Intended to reduce test cycle duration and also to reduce test set up
complexity.
Developing on-chip test circuitries.

CAD for VLSI:

Simulation verifications improves chip yield.
Development of sophisticated softwares to improve designs and to
reduce design time.
No automated simulation tools for Analog/RF designs.

6th November, 2014 11 /

Guwahati,As
17

Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

Challenges in circuits
Circuits

Analog
Ex: Amplifiers,
Filters, Mixers.

Digital
Ex: Logic gates,
Flip flops, registers.

Mixed Signal
Ex: ADCs.

Figure: Categorization of circuits

Less area, low power and high speed are the general challenges.
Performances has to be independent of PVT (Process-Voltage- Temperature) variations.
Adaptable circuits are given more preference.
Development of SOC (System-On-Chip): Integrating both analog and
digital using same technology is challenging.
Development of SIP (System-In-Package) where analog and digital circuits might be implemented in different technology.

6th November, 2014 12 /

Guwahati,As
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Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

Acknowledgement

Gaurav Saxena
Saroj Mandol
Pavan Kumar Manchi
Harikrishna
Mengisteab Gebremedhin
Surya Prakash

6th November, 2014 13 /

Guwahati,As
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Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

References
[1] S.-H. Hung, K.-W. Cheng, and Y.-H. Wang, An ultra-broadband
subharmonic mixer with distributed amplifier using 90-nm CMOS
technology, Microwave Theory and Techniques, IEEE Transactions on,
vol. 61, no. 10, pp. 36503657, Oct 2013.
[2] J. C. Scheytt, Y. Sun, K. Schmalz, and R. Wang, SiGe BiCMOS
transceivers, antennas, and ultra-low-cost packaging for the ISM bands at 122
and 245 GHz, in Microwave Symposium Digest (MTT), 2012 IEEE MTT-S
International, June 2012, pp. 13.
[3] K. Okada, K. Kondou, M. Miyahara, M. Shinagawa, H. Asada, R. Minami,
T. Yamaguchi, A. Musa, Y. Tsukui, Y. Asakura, S. Tamonoki, H. Yamagishi,
Y. Hino, T. Sato, H. Sakaguchi, N. Shimasaki, T. Ito, Y. Takeuchi, N. Li,
Q. Bu, R. Murakami, K. Bunsen, K. Matsushita, M. Noda, and
A. Matsuzawa, Full four-channel 6.3-Gb/s 60-GHz CMOS transceiver with
low-power analog and digital baseband circuitry, Solid-State Circuits, IEEE
Journal of, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 4665, Jan 2013.

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Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

[4] W.-C. Liu, F.-C. Yeh, C.-Y. Wu, T.-C. Wei, Y.-S. Huang, S.-J. Huang, C.-D.
Chan, S.-J. Jou, and S.-G. Chen, An IEEE 802.15.3c/802.11ad compliant
SC/OFDM dual-mode baseband receiver for 60 GHz band, in Circuits and
Systems (ISCAS), 2014 IEEE International Symposium on, June 2014, pp.
10061009.
[5] K. Rawat, M. Hashmi, and F. Ghannouchi, Dual-band RF circuits and
components for multi-standard software defined radios, Circuits and Systems
Magazine, IEEE, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1232, Firstquarter 2012.
[6] X.-F. Teng, Y.-T. Zhang, C. Poon, and P. Bonato, Wearable medical
systems for p-health, Biomedical Engineering, IEEE Reviews in, vol. 1, pp.
6274, 2008.
[7] Y. Li, C. Poon, and Y.-T. Zhang, Analog integrated circuits design for
processing physiological signals, Biomedical Engineering, IEEE Reviews in,
vol. 3, pp. 93105, 2010.
[8] K. W. Oh, K. Lee, B. Ahn, and E. P. Furlani, Design of pressure-driven
microfluidic networks using electric circuit analogy, Lab on a Chip, vol. 12,
no. 3, pp. 515545, 2012.

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Guwahati,As
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Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

[9] S. Bandyopadhyay and A. Chandrakasan, Platform architecture for solar,

thermal, and vibration energy combining with MPPT and single inductor,
Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of, vol. 47, no. 9, pp. 21992215, Sept
2012.

6th November, 2014 16 /

Guwahati,As
17

Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology

Thank you

6th November, 2014 17 /

Guwahati,As
17

Vinay Rao ( Department of Electronic & Electrical

Through
Engineering
VLSI: A Summary
Indian Institute of Technology