Introduction to VLSI Design

By
N.Nagaraju
Assistant Professor
Dept.of ECE
Acronym of VLSI
V -> Very
L -> Large
S -> Scale
I -> Integration
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Introduction
Electronic device
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Introduction
Electronic device
PCB
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Introduction
Electronic device PCB
Integrated circuit
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Introduction
Electronic device PCB
Integrated circuit
Integrated circuit - core
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Introduction
Electronic device PCB
Integrated circuit
Interconnection
Integrated circuit - core
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Introduction
Electronic device PCB
Integrated circuit
Interconnection
Integrated circuit - core Transistor
Wire Bonding
lead frame
gold wire
bonding pad
connecting pin
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Why doing IC design?
IC Design
- maximum freedom of adjusting parameters of the
electronic circuit to meet the specification

A pplication
S pecific
I tegrated
C ircuit
Large integration density
Scaling
Low power
Low cost
Most of modern electronics is fabricated
by CMOS
High speed low noise applications
High power consumption
Low density integration
Typical applications: TTL logic, OpAmps,
discrete components
Widely used in the past
Bipolar technology CMOS technology
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Why Make ICs
Integration improves
Physical Size, Speed, Power consumption,
Reliability
Integration reduce manufacturing costs
Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI)
design/manufacturing of extremely small, complex
circuitry using semiconductor material
integrated circuit (IC) may contain millions of
transistors, each a few mm in size


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A Brief History
Invention of the Transistor
Vacuum tubes ruled in first half of 20
th
century Large,
expensive, power-hungry, unreliable




1947: first point contact transistor (3 terminal devices)
William.B.Shockley, John Bardeen and
Walter.H.Brattain at Bell Labs
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A Brief History, contd..
1958: First integrated circuit
Built by Jack Kilby (Nobel Laureate) at Texas Instruments
Robert Noyce (Fairchild) is also considered as a co-inventor

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A simple
oscillator IC with
five integrated
components
(resistors,
capacitors,
distributed
capacitors and
transistors)
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1959 - Planar technology
invented
Kilby's invention had a serious drawback, the
individual circuit elements were connected
together with gold wires making the circuit
difficult to scale up to any complexity.

By late 1958 Jean Hoerni at Fairchild had
developed a structure with N and P junctions
formed in silicon. Over the junctions a thin layer
of silicon dioxide was used as an insulator and
holes were etched open in the silicon dioxide to
connect to the junctions.

In 1959, Robert Noyce also of Fairchild had the
idea to evaporate a thin metal layer over the
circuits created by Hoerni's process.

The metal layer connected down to the
junctions through the holes in the silicon
dioxide and was then etched into a pattern to
interconnect the circuit. Planar technology set
the stage for complex integrated circuits and is
the process used today.


Planar technology IC
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IC Fabrication Technology: History (cont.)

1960 - Epitaxial deposition developed
Bell Labs developed the technique of Epitaxial Deposition whereby a single
crystal layer of material is deposited on a crystalline substrate. Epitaxial
deposition is widely used in bipolar and sub-micron CMOS fabrication.

1960 - First MOSFET fabricated
Kahng at Bell Labs fabricates the first MOSFET.

1961 - First commercial ICs
Fairchild and Texas Instruments both introduce commercial ICs.

1962 - Transistor-Transistor Logic invented
1962 - Semiconductor industry surpasses $1-billion in sales

1963 - First MOS IC
RCA produces the first PMOS IC.


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1963 - CMOS invented
Frank Wanlass at Fairchild Semiconductor originated and published the idea
of complementary-MOS (CMOS).

It occurred to Wanlass that a complementary circuit of NMOS and PMOS
would draw very little current. Initially Wanlass tried to make a monolithic
solution, but eventually he was forced to prove the concept with discrete
devices.

Enhancement mode NMOS transistors were not yet available and so Wanlass
was used a depletion mode device biased to the off-state.
Amazingly CMOS shrank standby power by six orders of magnitude over
equivalent bipolar or PMOS logic gates.

On June 18, 1963 Wanlass applied for a patent. On December 5th 1967
Wanlass was issued U.S. Patent for "Low Stand-By Power complementary
Field Effect Circuitry".

CMOS forms the basis of the vast majority of all high density ICs
manufactured today.

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Microprocessor invented
1971- Intel 4004

The combination of the Busicom (Japanese calculator company) and Intel
the first 4-bit microprocessor was in production.
required roughly 2,300 transistors to implement, used a silicon gate PMOS
process with 10m linewidths,
had a 108KHz clock speed.
In 1974 Intel introduced the 8080, the first commercially successful
microprocessor.

1972 - Intel 8008

The 8008 was the 8 bit successor to the 4004 and was used in the Mark-8
computer, one of the first home computers.

The 8008 had 3,500 transistors, a 200kHz clock speed
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Pentium processor invented
1993 - Intel Pentium I
The Pentium is the first processor from Intel capable of executing more than 1 instruction per
clock cycle. The Pentium was manufactured in a silicon gate BiCMOS process with 0.8m
linewidth, required 18 mask layers and had 1 polysilicon layer and 3 metal layers, the Pentium
had 3.1 million transistors, a 60 to 66MHz clock speed and a 264mm2 die size.

1994 - 64Mbit DRAM
The 64Mbit DRAM was produced on a CMOS process with 3 to 5 polysilicon layers, 2 to 3 metal
layers and 0.35m minimum features. The resulting product had a 1.5m2 memory cell size.

1997 - Intel Pentium II
The Pentium II was manufactured in a silicon gate CMOS process with 0.35m linewidth, required
16 mask layers and had 1 polysilicon layer and 4 metal layers, the Pentium II had 7.5 million
transistors, a 233 to 300MHz clock speed and a 209mm2 die size.

1998 - 256Mbit DRAM
The 256Mbit DRAM was produced on a CMOS process with 4 to 5 polysilicon layers, 2 to 3 metal
layers and 0.25m minimum features.The product had a die size of approximately 204mm2.

1999 - Intel Pentium III
The Pentium III returned to a more standard PGA package and integrated the cache on chip. The
Pentium III was manufactured in a silicon gate CMOS process with 0.18m linewidths, required 21
mask layers and had 1 polysilicon layer and 6 metal layers, the Pentium III had 28 million
transistors, a 500 to 900MHz clock speed and a 140mm2 die size.


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VLSI Trends: Moores Law
In 1965, Gordon Moore predicted that
transistors would continue to shrink, allowing:
Doubled transistor density every 18-24 months
Doubled performance every 18-24 months
History has proven Moore right
Gordon Moore
Intel Co-Founder and Chairmain Emeritus
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Moores Law
1965: Gordon Moore plotted transistor on each chip
Fit straight line on semilog scale
Transistor counts have doubled every 18-24 months
Year
T
r
a
n
s
i
s
t
o
r
s
4004
8008
8080
8086
80286
Intel386
Intel486
Pentium
Pentium Pro
Pentium II
Pentium III
Pentium 4
1,000
10,000
100,000
1,000,000
10,000,000
100,000,000
1,000,000,000
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
Integration Levels
SSI: 10 gates
MSI: 1000 gates
LSI: 10,000 gates
VLSI: > 10k gates
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Microprocessor trends
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IC Evolution
SSI Small Scale Integration (early 1970s)
contained 1 10 logic gates, Flipflops
MSI Medium Scale Integration
logic functions, counters, Multiplexer
LSI Large Scale Integration
first microprocessors on the chip, ROM, RAM
VLSI Very Large Scale Integration
now offers 64-bit microprocessors,
complete with cache memory,
floating-point arithmetic unit(s), etc.
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IC Evolution
Bipolar technology
TTL (transistor-transistor logic)
ECL (emitter-coupled logic)
MOS (Metal-oxide-silicon)
initially difficult to manufacture
nMOS (n-channel MOS) technology developed in 1970s
required fewer masking steps, was denser, and
consumed less power than equivalent bipolar ICs => an
MOS IC was cheaper than a bipolar IC and led to
investment and growth of the MOS IC market.
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IC Evolution
aluminum gates for replaced by polysilicon by early
1980
CMOS (Complementary MOS): n-channel and p-
channel MOS transistors =>
lower power consumption, simplified fabrication
process
Bi-CMOS - hybrid Bipolar and CMOS (for high
speed)
GaAs - Gallium Arsenide (for high speed)
Si-Ge - Silicon Germanium (for RF)
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Performance of Available
Technologies
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VLSI Technology - MOS
Transistors
Key feature:
transistor length L
2002: L=130nm
2003: L=90nm
2005: L=65nm
2013: L=22nm
2017: L=?

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Microprocessor Trends (Log
Scale)
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DRAM Memory Trends (Log
Scale)
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Intel 4004
Introduction date:
November 15, 1971
Clock speed: 108 KHz
Number of transistors: 2,300
(10 microns)
Bus width: 4 bits
Addressable memory: 640
bytes
Typical use:
calculator, first
microcomputer chip,
arithmetic manipulation
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Gallery - Pentium Processors
Pentium III
28M transistors / 733MHz-1Gz / 13-26W
L=0.25 m shrunk to L=0.18 m
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Gallery Pentium Processors
Pentium 4
42M transistors / 1.3-1.8GHz / 49-55W
L=0.18 m
Pentium 4 Northwood
55M transistors / 2-2.5GHz
L=0.13 m
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Pentium 4
0.18-micron process technology
(2, 1.9, 1.8, 1.7, 1.6, 1.5, and 1.4 GHz)
Introduction date: August 27, 2001
(2, 1.9 GHz); ...; November 20, 2000
(1.5, 1.4 GHz)
Level Two cache: 256 KB Advanced
Transfer Cache (Integrated)
System Bus Speed: 400 MHz
Transistors: 42 Million
Typical Use: Desktops and entry-
level workstations
0.13-micron process technology
(2.53, 2.2, 2 GHz)
Introduction date: January 7, 2002
Level Two cache: 512 KB Advanced
Transistors: 55 Million
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The wafer processing which is performed in a Wafer
Fab area.

wafer fabrication is a series of 16-24 loops, each
putting down a layer on the device. Each loop
comprises some or all of the major steps of
photolithography, etch, strip, diffusion, ion implantation,
deposition, and chemical vapor deposition.

At each stage, various inspections and
measurements performed to monitor the process and
equipment.
It has the cleanest environment in the world - many
times cleaner than the best hospital operating theater.




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Test, Assembly and Packaging, where the finished
wafer is split up into individual die (chips) which are
then assembled into packages which can be handled
in the final applications.

Full functional electrical test is performed at both
wafer and package level to ensure outgoing quality.
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