ELEC-E3520 Digital Microelectronics I

Introduction
Marko Kosunen
Department of Electronics and Nanoengineering
Aalto University, School of Electrical Engineering
[email protected]

11.01.2021
History of the digital computing
Gottfried Leibniz, 1679. Binary arithmetic. Publication “Explication
de l’Arithmetique Binaire”.

Quote:
”A concept that is not easy to impart to the pagans, is the creation ex
nihilo through God’s almighty power. Now one can say that nothing in the
world can better present and demonstrate this power than the origin of
numbers, as it is presented here through the simple and unadorned
presentation of One and Zero or Nothing.”
-In Leibniz’s letter to the Duke of Brunswick

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History of the digital computing
Charles Babbage, Born 1791. Were not built ready in
Babbage’s time

Quote:
”If unwarned by my example, any
man shall undertake and shall
succeed in really constructing an
engine ... upon different principles
or by simpler mechanical means, I
Difference Engine and have no fear of leaving my
Analytical Engine. reputation in his charge, for he alone
Models of Turing-complete will be fully able to appreciate the
nature of my efforts and the value of
mechanical computers.
their results.”
Programs designed by Ada
Lovelace.

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History of the digital computing
George Boole, Born 1815.
”Mathematical Analysis of Logic”, 1847.
Pamphlet with a claim that Logic should be allied
with mathematics, not philosophy.
”An Investigation into the Laws of Thought, on
Which Are Founded the Mathematical Theories
of Logic and Probabilities”, 1854.
Resulted in formulation of what is nowadays
known as ”Boolean Algebra”.
Augustus De Morgan, Born 1806.
De Morgan’s Laws. Tool for simplifying
reformulating Boolean arithmetic functions.

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History of the digital computing
Boolean algebra

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History of the digital computing
Claude Shannon 1916-2001
In 1932, University of
Michigan. Got acquainted
with theories of Boole.
Bachelor degrees in
electrical engineering and
mathematics.
Moved to MIT for graduate ”A Symbolic Analysis of
studies Relay and Switching
As an assistant, maintained Circuits”, 1938, based on his
Differential analyzer, a 1937 Master’s thesis, thus
mechanical device designed combining Boolean theories
to compute integrals. and electrical circuits.

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History of the digital computing
Alan Turing and John von Neumann.
Turing developed theories on problem solving and algorithms
implementable with a Turing Machine.
Von Neumann computer architecture is basically a physical
implementation of a Turing machine.

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History of the digital computing

Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC, Harvard

Mark I).
Idea of Howard Aiken, 1937. Funded by IBM 1939, ready
1944.
Electromechanical computer taking advantage of ideas of
Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine.
Speed: Three additions per second.
Weight: 4500kg, Dimensions: 16x2,4x0.61m

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History of the digital computing

Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC), 1945.

Fully electronic computer built with vacuum tubes.
10 digit decimal arithmetic.
Speed: 5000 additions/s. Size: 30x2,4x0.9m, Weight:
27000kg

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History of the digital computing
ENIAC was followed by Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic
Calculator, EDVAC initiated 1946, operational 1951.
Unlike ENIAC, EDVAC used binary arithmetic and stored its
program to memory.
Also other research and design teams built quite similar
computers with vacuum tubes at like EDSAC and UNIVAC.
But the game was about to change. . .

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Transistor

The first transistor, Bell Labs, 1948

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Integrated circuits

The first IC, Jack Kilby, Texas Instruments 1951.

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The first planar IC, Fairchild semiconductor, 1960.

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Integrated circuits

The first commercial MOS IC, General Microelectronics, 1965.

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Integrated circuits

Moore’s Law, Electronics, April 19, 1965.

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Integrated circuits

Intel 4004, 1971, 1000 transistors, 1MHz clock.

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Integrated circuits

Moore’s Law for Intel microprocessors.

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Scaling

Moore’s law is a
consequence of
downscaling of the
transistor dimensions (in
CMOS).

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Motivation for scaling
Assuming the manufacturing cost does not increase at the
same pace with the scaling, it is possible to
Reduce the cost of an function implemented on a chip.
Increase the number of functions per chip.
Increase the speed.
Reduce the power consumption.

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Consequences of scaling
Nowadays, about 200 million transistors can fit in the head of
a pin.
It is estimated that the price per transistor on a chip is now
about the same as that of a printed character in a newspaper.
In 1978, a commercial flight between New York and Paris cost
about $900 and took 7 hours.
Moore’s law applied to those figures would result in cost of a
penny and travel time of one second.
Smaller dimensions means increased speed.
A human can perform a on/off switching about twice a second
and it will take 25 years to switch 1.5 · 109 times.
A modern CMOS transistor on a chip can do that easily in one
second.

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End of scaling?

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Digital microelectronics is more than
microprocessors
Not only general purpose microprocessors.
The most demanding computing tasks are found in:
Real time image processing
Real time signal processing
Accelerators for AI/machine learning.
Signal processing units utilize specialized, less flexible, but
efficient hardware to perform demanding computational tasks.

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Digital microelectronics is more than
microprocessors
Typical tasks include:
Data modulation and demodulation in radio transmitters.
Filtering, interpolation and decimation.
Conversion algorithms, like FFT and alikes (DCT)
Vector rotations and coordinate mapping.
Digital frequency synthesizers.
Error correction coding and decoding.
Real time calibration and predistortion algorithm
implementations.
These specialized blocks can be found, for example, in
graphics processors, signal processors, and in radio
transceivers.

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What we mean by digital circuit design?

Designing digital circuits is mapping logical functions to

transistor level equivalents, implemented on a chosen
platform, ASIC or FPGA.

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Design methods
Logic gates are designed using transistors on device
(transistor) level.
Simple logic functions can be designed with truth tables or
Karnaugh maps on gate level, although it is beneficial to
synthesize the blocs with automated design tools.
More complex functions/algorithm implementations or entire
systems are modeled with Hardware Description Languages
which are used together with a set of automated design tools.
Current effort is to move to the higher abstraction level in
design
Behavioral synthesis from VHDL, verilog or System C.
Embedded hardware description languages like Chisel (Scala)
Circuit desing is merging with programming
New skillset requirements for the designer

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Design methods:Implementation Flow

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Optimization of the design

While designing the logic Further power savings can

functions, there is almost be achieved, if the supply
always possibility for voltage of individual blocks
Area/speed/power can be lowered without
consumption trade-offs. compromising the overall
Most of the gain is throughput.
achieved on the upper
levels of the hierarchy,
rather than on transistor or
gate level.
In general, computational
hardware is first minimized
by intelligent algorithmic
optimization.

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Shortly on devices
Complementary types
NMOS and PMOS
Operation regions valid for
this course:
Cut-off
Linear
Saturation
Velocity saturated

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Current equations
Cutoff: vGS < VT
iD = 0

Linear: vGS ≥ VT , vDS ≤ vGS − VT

iD = k 0 WL (vGS − VT ) vDS − 21 vDS
2

Saturation: vGS ≥ VT , vDS > vGS − VT , vGS − VT < VDSAT

iD = k 0 2L
W
(vGS − VT )2 (1 + λvDS )

Velocity saturation: vGS ≥ VT , vDS > vGS − VT > VDSAT

iD = k 0 WL (vGS − VT ) VDSAT − 12 VDSAT
2


(1 + λvDS )
VDSAT = Lξc

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Hand calculations
Hand calculations are performed to understand the
dependencies and phenomena present in the circuit.
Hand calculations are never absolutely accurate.
Often the calculations are based on assumptions and
approximations, which in best case, affect the accuracy of the
result but still provide valid insight on the dependencies.
Understand the limitations that result from the selection of the
transistor model. (If you neglect the λ from the saturation
region current equation, you will not have resistance between
the drain and source etc.)
Keep this in mind, and reflect your results to your intuitive
understanding.

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ELEC-E3520 objectives
After the course, the student is familiar with the following
topics:
Performance characteristics of a digital gate.
Synthesis of the logic gates. Properties characteristics of the
various logic families.
Synchronization circuits, flip-flops and latches.
Data transfer, synchronization, noise and interference.
Basic algorithm structures, adders, multipliers, CORDIC, FFT.
(memory, microcontrollers)
Optimization methods in digital microelecronics.
Retiming,parallelism, pipelining, unfolding (etc.).
Intended learning outcomes are described in more detail per
lecture.

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Books
1 Rabaey, J. M., Chandrakasan, A. and Nikolic, B., “Digital
integrated Circuits,” Prentice Hall, Pearson Education
International, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2003
2 K. Parhi., “VLSI Digital Signal Processing Systems,” John
Wiley & Sons, 1999.

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Course outline
Day 1: Introduction
Day 2: Inverter [Rabaey], Ch.5
Day 3: Logic gate synthesis, logic families [Rabaey] Ch. 6.
Day 4: Synchronization circuits, latches, flip-flops, TSPC-logic.
[Rabaey]
Day 5: Data transfer, synchronization, noise and interference,
metastability. [Rabaey] Ch. 4, Ch.7, Ch. 9.
Day 6: Building blocks of digital IC’s: Adders, multipliers, CORDIC,
FFT, (coders/decoders, memory). [Rabaey] Ch. 11, )
Day 7: Optimization methods: Retiming,parallelism, pipelining,
unfolding (etc.)[Rabaey] Ch. 11, [Parhi]
Day 8: Presentation session
Day 9: Presentation session 2 (if required)
Day 10: Exam

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Course Qualification
Exercise 30 points
Presentation 20 points
Design project 20
Exam 30
Qualification: 50 pts, minimum 15 from exam.

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Exercises
Should be returned by the next exercise time, no grace period.
Teaching assistant: Santeri Porrasmaa,
[email protected]

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Presentation
Subject chosen by you.
Given on week 6
Short 3-slide presentation about an application of digital
microelectronics. (Component, toy, platform, gizmo, product).
Describe how it applies digital microelectronics, and is there
any fancy, new or mindblowing in it, (taking into account when
it was released).
Grading based on content and style of the presentation.

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Design project
Characterization of a logic gate (or voluntarily more complex
entity).
Grading based on study diary, Latex template will be provided
in My Courses.
Extra points will be given subjectively based on complexity.
Apply the computer account at https://bubba.ecdl.hut.fi/forms
(if you do not already have account at “vspace”)
Demo/guided session/instructions will be announced later in
My Courses.
Should be returned by the Exam.

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Teaching of Digital microelectronics design in ELEC
ELEC-E3520 Digital Microelectronics I (5 cr, Periods III)
Device and gate level design methods and lower level building
blocks. Design principles.

ELEC-E3540 Digital Microelectronics II (5 cr, periods IV-V)

Basic Course on VHDL Hardware Description Language,
Computer architecture, and implementation methods with EDA
tools.

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