IC and MEMS design

In the frame of the subject the students get the knowledge of the basic principles and design methodology of the integrated circuits and MEMS devices. They get an overview from the system level design to the physical design. During the laboratory practices the students use industrial standard developer tools.

Weekly breakdown:

Week 1: Basics of system level design: FPGA, gate array, standard cell and full custom design. IC as a implementation form.

Week 2: (C)MOS principles, design rules.

Week 3: Implementation of basic digital gates and simple circuits on transistor level: the schematics, the layout and sizing

Week 4: Design tools. Open design tools. Cadence Opus and Mentor design tools as examples. Designer’s database, configurations.

Week 5: Methodology of IC design. Abstraction levels, simulations and validations. Top-down and bottom-up design methodology.

Week 6: Standard cell IC design. Cell library. Input forms: schematics, HDL description, blocks.

Week 7: Pre-layout simulation. Floor plan, detailed layout, post-layout simulation.

Week 8: Design for testability. Fault models, fault detection. The D-algorithm, ATPG, DFT, Scan-Path.

Week 9: Perspectivity of IC technology, trends. Full system integration on a single chip: passive devices and non-electronic functions.

Week 10: Problems with Deep-submicron technology, dissipation density, temperature-aware design

Week 11: Strategies of MEMS design. Presentation of different application specific design methodologies through different examples.

Week 12: Coupled physical modelling, multi-domain models,

Week 13: Modelling and simulation of MEMS devices. Numeric methods (Finite Element Analysis, Reduced Order Modelling, multi-physics simulations).

Week 14: General physical simulation softwares, MEMS design software tools.