Complexity and Design
Creating a design team provides
a realistic approach to
approaching a VLSI project, as it
allows each person to study small
sections of the system
Needing hundreds of engineers,
scientists, and technicians
Needing hierarchy design and
many different Level Views
Everyone of each level depends
upon the Computer-Aided
Design (CAD) tools
Design Hierarchy
System specifications: is defined in both
general and specific terms, such as functions,
speed, size, etc.
Abstract high-level model: contains
information on the behavior of each block and
the interaction among the blocks in the system
Logic synthesis: To provide the logic design of
the network by specifying the primitive gates
and units needed to build each unit
Circuit design: where transistors are used as
switches and Boolean variables are treated as
vary voltage signals
Physical design: the network is built on a tiny
area on a slice of silicon
Manufacturing: a completed design process is
moved on to the manufacturing line
Design Hierarchy
Hierarchical design
Top-down design
The initial work is quite abstract and theoretical and there is no
direct connection to silicon until many steps have been
completed
Acceptable in modern digital system design
Co-design with combining HW/SW is critical
Similar to Cell-based Design Flow
Bottom-up design
starts at the silicon or circuit level and builds primitive units
such as logic gates, adders, and registers as the first steps
Acceptable for small projects
Similar to Full-custom Design Flow
Design Hierarchy
System Specifications
Abstract high-level model
Logic Synthesis
Circuit Design
Physical Design
Manufacturing
Finished VLSI Chip
Design Hierarchy (Example)
Based on divide and conquer
Dividing a module into sub- modules and then
repeating this operation on the sub-modules until the
complexity of the smaller parts becomes manageable.
In fig.,CMOS four-bit adder into its components.
The adder can be decomposed progressively into one-
bit adders, separate carry and sum circuits, and finally,
into individual logic gates. At this lower level of the
hierarchy, the design of a simple circuit realizing a
well-defined Boolean function is much more easier to
handle than at the higher levels of the hierarchy.
VLSI Chip Types
At the engineering level, digital VLSI chips are classified by the
approach used to implement and build the circuit
Full-custom Design: where every circuit is custom designed for the
project
Extremely tedious
Time-consuming process
Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs): using an
extensive suite of CAD tools that portray the system design in terms
of standard digital logic constructs
Including state diagrams, functions tables, and logic diagram
Designer does not need any knowledge of the underlying electronics or
the physic of the silicon chip
Major drawback is that all characteristics are set by the architectural
design
Semi-custom Design: between that of a full-custom and ASICs
Using a group of primitive predefined cells as building blocks, called cell
library
Regularity, Modularity and
Locality
The hierarchical design approach reduces the design complexity
by dividing the large system into several sub-modules. Usually,
other design concepts and design approaches are also needed to
simplify the process.
1) Regularity:
Decomposition of a large system in simple and similar blocks as
much as possible.
Example:
Design of array structures consisting of identical
cells - such as a parallel multiplication array.
2) Modularity:
Modularity in design means that the various functional blocks
which make up the larger system must have well-defined
functions and interfaces.
Modularity allows that each block or module can be designed
relatively independently from each other.
All of the blocks can be combined with ease at the end of the
design process, to form the large system.
The concept of modularity enables the parallelisation of the
design process.
3) Locality:
The concept of locality also ensures that connections are mostly
between neighboring modules, avoiding long-distance
connections as much as possible.
