INTRODUCTION TO ANALOG

ELECTRONICS AND VLSI DESIGN:

AN INTRODUCTORY DISCUSSION ON ANALOG ELECTRONICS AND
VLSI DESIGN

Dr. Santanu Sarkar

Department of ECE 1

NIT Rourkela
 Contents
1. Introduction to VLSI

2. Different Vertices of VLSI Circuits

3. Challenges of VLSI Designs

4. Application of VLSI Circuits and Data Converters

5. Prospects and Job opportunity

6. Conclusion and Question Answers

2

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Introduction to VLSI
• VLSI: VLSI stands for Very-large-scale integration. VLSI is the process of creating an integrated
circuit (IC) by combining billions of transistors into a single chip.
• The evolution in semiconductor industry started with Vacuum Tube Diode, ICs of Discrete
Components, then VLSI Circuits and finally, System-on-Chip (SoC).
• The evolution of Integrated Circuits can be classified into different categories depending on the
number of transistors fabricated on a single IC. They are as follows:

• SSI: Small Scale Integration. Few tens of transistors in a single IC.

• MSI: Medium Scale Integration. Refers to microchips containing 100s of transistors.
• LSI: Large Scale Integration. Refers to microchips containing 1000s of transistors.
• VLSI: Very Large Scale Integration. Refers to microchips containing hundreds of thousands of
(millions) transistors.
• ULSI: Ultra Large Scale Integration. Refers to microchips containing billions of transistors.

• Modern VLSI Circuits actually refers to ULSI. 3

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Advancement of VLSI & Moore’s law

• Moore’s Law • Power Consumption in Intel Processor

• Gordon Moore, Co-founder of Intel (1968), first indicated that the number of transistors
4 in a
Microprocessor chip will increase at a rate of 1.5 to 2 times per year. The statement was quite
accurate and is widely known as Moore’s law.
DR. SANTANU SARKAR
 History of VLSI

• Invention of Transistor: William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter H. Brattein of Bell
Laboratory invented the transistor on 23rd December, 1947. They were awarded Nobel prize in
1956 for Physics for the invention of the transistors.

• The first patent on MOS FET was issued by Julius Lillienfeld in 1929. Due to implementation
difficulty which was first implemented much later around 1959.

• First IC: The first IC was invented in 1958 by Jack Kilby of TI, who won the Nobel Prize in 2000
(10 components in 9 mm2), and later, Robert Noyce, of Fairchild (Co-founder of intel) improved it.

• 1st Microprocessor: Ted Hoff of Intel implemented first Microprocessor (4004) in 1971.
Approximately 2300 transistors were there.

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 VLSI Technology-MOS Fabrication

• NMOS and PMOS.

6
• Fabrication Steps.

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 VLSI Technology-Latch Up

• Latch up problem • Equivalent Circuit and Large latch-up current

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 VLSI Technology-SOI

• Use of Guard Ring to reduce Latch Up • SOI Technology

 How to reduce Latch Up:
• Every well must have an appropriate substrate contact.
• Every substrate contact should be directly connected to  Advantage of SOI:
a supply pad by metal. • Due to the absence of wells, transistor structures denser than
• Substrate contacts should be placed as close as possible bulk silicon are feasible.
to the source connection of transistors to reduce the • Lower substrate capacitance.
value of both Rs and Rwell. • No field-inversion problems (the existence of a parasitic
8
transistor between two normal transistors).
• No latch-up is possible because of the isolation of transistors
DR. SANTANU SARKAR by insulating substrate.
 Integrated Circuits

• First Planer IC and photo of a Intel Microprocessor die.

9

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Integrated Circuits

• Silicon Wafer, die and Packaged IC.

10

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Integrated Circuits

• Design Specification
• Architectural Design
• RTL Coding/ Circuit Design
• Synthesis
• Physical Design
• GDS (Graphic Database System)
• Fabrication
• Package and Test

11

DR. SANTANU SARKAR • VLSI Design Flow

 VLSI Design Flow

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Integrated Circuits

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

• VLSI Design Flow
 VLSI Design Flow

14

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

Major Branches of Microelectronics & VLSI Design
• Analog VLSI (Linear Amplifier, Data Converters, PLL, Reference Generator, etc.)

• Digital VLSI (Microprocessor, Memory, etc.)

i) ASIC (Gate Array, Semi Custom, Full Custom)

ii) FPD ( PLD [PLA, PAL], FPGA)

• Power Management ( LDO Regulators, DC-DC Converters, etc.)

• RFIC Design (Transceiver Circuit, Oscillator, PLL, etc.)

• MEMS and Signal Conditioning (Capacitive sensors, Pressure sensors, etc.)

15

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

FPGA

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

Major Branches of Microelectronics & VLSI Design

17

• Power Management • RFIC

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Low Power Design Challenge

• Dynamic Power dissipation in CMOS

Circuits

18

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Low Power Design Challenge

• To reduce power dissipation for portable

battery operated consumer electronics
devices, several low power design techniques
are incorporated.
• Some of the important low power design
techniques are:
• Scaling supply voltage, Utilising Multiple Vth
devices, Reducing gate oxide capacitance by
using superior technology, reducing signal
activity, utilising parallelism and pipelining,
improvement in clock driver network and
improved metal layer to reduce parasitic
capacitance of the data bus. 19
• Green IC

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 SOC

20

• SoC provides improved area-cost-performance over SoB (System on Board)

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 SOC Design Steps

• SoC Design Window

• Planning to Product Launch
• The complete planning
• Proper Time Budget
• And Manpower Allocation

21

• SoC Design Time (Window) Slots

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Signal Processing

22

• The Flow of Signals

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Data Converters

• Analog and Digital Signals

23

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Data Converters

• Analog and Digital Signals

24

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Data Converters

• Sampling Theorem
and Aliasing

• Quantisations

25

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Analog-to-Digital Data Converters

 Architectures:
• Flash ADC
• Dual Slope ADC
• Oversampling ADC
• Successive approximation ADC
• Pipeline ADC

 Metrics:
• Resolution
• INL, DNL
• Sampling and Signal Frequency
• Signal-to-Noise Ratio
• ENOB 26

• THD

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 ADC Applications

• A Typical Receiver Block

27

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 DAC Architectures

28

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 DAC

 Architectures:
• Resistor String DAC
• R-2R DAC
• Capacitive DAC
• Oversampling DAC
• Current Steering DAC

29

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Implementation of the Proposed DAC

DR. SANTANU SARKAR 30

Implementation of 10-bit 500 MSPS CS DAC

31

Layout of Bandgap Current Reference

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

Implementation of 10-bit 500 MSPS CS DAC

32

Layout of Bandgap Current Reference and Current Cell Matrix

DR. SANTANU SARKAR
Test Set Ups and Test Plans for the DACs

DR. SANTANU SARKAR 33

Test Set Ups for the DACs Test Plan: Outline of the PCBs
Test Results of the First 8-bit 100 MSPS Low
Power DAC

DR. SANTANU SARKAR 34

 Die Micrograph of the DAC Chip

DR. SANTANU SARKAR 35

Implementation of 10-bit 500 MSPS CS DAC

36

DR. SANTANU SARKAR Test Set-up of the 10-bit DAC

 Measured Frequency Spectrum

DR. SANTANU SARKAR 37

65.90 dB SFDR for 146 kHz signal sampled at 50 MSPS

(Bluetooth Setting)
 Measured Sinusoidal Output

DR. SANTANU SARKAR 38

Measured Sinusoidal Output for 1.07 MHz signal sampled at 100 MSPS
(WLAN Setting)
 Application of DACs

Direct Transmitter System

39

Biomedical Applications: Emerging Field

DR. SANTANU SARKAR
 Application of VLSI Circuits

40

DR. SANTANU SARKAR Hardware and Cyber Security

 Application of VLSI Circuits

41

VLSI Application Areas

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Job Opportunity

42

DR. SANTANU SARKAR

 Thank You for Your Attention 

Questions??  
43

DR. SANTANU SARKAR