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Power Network Design (IC)
In the design of integrated circuits, power network design is the analysis and design of on-chip conductor networks that distribute electrical power on a chip. As in all engineering, this involves tradeoffs - the network must have adequate performance, be sufficiently reliable, but should not use more resources than required. Function The power distribution network distributes power and ground voltages from pad locations to all devices in a design. Shrinking device dimensions, faster switching frequencies and increasing power consumption in deep sub-micrometer technologies cause large switching currents to flow in the power and ground networks which degrade performance and reliability. A robust power distribution network is essential to ensure reliable operation of circuits on a chip. Power supply integrity verification is a critical concern in high-performance designs. Design considerations Due to the resistance of the interconnects constituting the network, there is a vol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microprocessor
A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circuitry required to perform the functions of a computer's central processing unit. The integrated circuit is capable of interpreting and executing program instructions and performing arithmetic operations. The microprocessor is a multipurpose, clock-driven, register-based, digital integrated circuit that accepts binary data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and provides results (also in binary form) as output. Microprocessors contain both combinational logic and sequential digital logic, and operate on numbers and symbols represented in the binary number system. The integration of a whole CPU onto a single or a few integrated circuits using Very-Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) greatly reduced the cost of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electronic Design Automation
Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing Electronics, electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools work together in a Design flow (EDA), design flow that chip designers use to design and analyze entire semiconductor chips. Since a modern semiconductor chip can have billions of components, EDA tools are essential for their design; this article in particular describes EDA specifically with respect to integrated circuits (ICs). History Early days Prior to the development of EDA, integrated circuits were designed by hand and manually laid out. Some advanced shops used geometric software to generate tapes for a Gerber format, Gerber photoplotter, responsible for generating a monochromatic exposure image, but even those copied digital recordings of mechanically drawn components. The process was fundamentally graphic, with the translation f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Power Gating
Power gating is a technique used in integrated circuit design to reduce power consumption, by shutting off the current to blocks of the circuit that are not in use. In addition to reducing stand-by or leakage power, power gating has the benefit of enabling Iddq testing. Overview Power gating affects design architecture more than clock gating. It increases time delays, as power gated modes have to be safely entered and exited. Architectural trade-offs exist between designing for the amount of leakage power saving in low power modes and the energy dissipation to enter and exit the low power modes. Shutting down the blocks can be accomplished either by software or hardware. Driver software can schedule the power down operations. Hardware timers can be utilized. A dedicated power management controller is another option. An externally switched power supply is a very basic form of power gating to achieve long term leakage power reduction. To shut off the block for small intervals of ti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Field Programmable Gate Array
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware description language (HDL), similar to that used for an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). Circuit diagrams were previously used to specify the configuration, but this is increasingly rare due to the advent of electronic design automation tools. FPGAs contain an array of programmable logic blocks, and a hierarchy of reconfigurable interconnects allowing blocks to be wired together. Logic blocks can be configured to perform complex combinational functions, or act as simple logic gates like AND and XOR. In most FPGAs, logic blocks also include memory elements, which may be simple flip-flops or more complete blocks of memory. Many FPGAs can be reprogrammed to implement different logic functions, allowing flexible reconfigurable ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gate Array
A gate array is an approach to the design and manufacture of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) using a prefabricated chip with components that are later interconnected into logic devices (e.g. NAND gates, flip-flops, etc.) according to a custom order by adding metal interconnect layers in the factory. It was popular during upheaval in semiconductor industry in 80s and its usage declined by end of 90s. Similar technologies have also been employed to design and manufacture analog, analog-digital, and structured arrays, but, in general, these are not called gate arrays. Gate arrays have also been known as ''uncommitted logic arrays'' (''ULAs''), which also offered linear circuit functions, and ''semi-custom chips''. History Development Gate arrays had several concurrent development paths. Ferranti in the UK pioneered commercializing bipolar ULA technology, offering circuits of "100 to 10,000 gates and above" by 1983. The company's early lead in semi-custom chips, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logic Simulation
Logic simulation is the use of simulation software to predict the behavior of digital circuits and hardware description languages. Simulation can be performed at varying degrees of physical abstraction, such as at the transistor level, gate level, register-transfer level (RTL), electronic system-level (ESL), or behavioral level. Use in verification Logic simulation may be used as part of the verification process in designing hardware. Simulations have the advantage of providing a familiar look and feel to the user in that it is constructed from the same language and symbols used in design. By allowing the user to interact directly with the design, simulation is a natural way for the designer to get feedback on their design. Length of simulation The level of effort required to debug and then verify the design is proportional to the maturity of the design. That is, early in the design's life, bugs and incorrect behavior are usually found quickly. As the design matures, the simul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clock Gating
Clock gating is a popular technique used in many synchronous circuits for reducing dynamic power dissipation, by removing the clock signal when the circuit is not in use or ignores clock signal. Clock gating saves power by pruning the clock tree, at the cost of adding more logic to a circuit. Pruning the clock disables portions of the circuitry so that the flip-flops in them do not have to switch states. Switching states consumes power. When not being switched, the switching power consumption goes to zero, and only leakage currents are incurred. Although asynchronous circuits by definition do not have a global "clock", the term perfect clock gating is used to illustrate how various clock gating techniques are simply approximations of the data-dependent behavior exhibited by asynchronous circuitry. As the granularity on which one gates the clock of a synchronous circuit approaches zero, the power consumption of that circuit approaches that of an asynchronous circuit: the circuit o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RLC Circuit
An RLC circuit is an electrical circuit consisting of a electrical resistance, resistor (R), an inductor (L), and a capacitor (C), connected in series or in parallel. The name of the circuit is derived from the letters that are used to denote the constituent components of this circuit, where the sequence of the components may vary from RLC. The circuit forms a harmonic oscillator for current, and resonance, resonates in a manner similar to an LC circuit. Introducing the resistor increases the decay of these oscillations, which is also known as damping. The resistor also reduces the peak resonant frequency. Some resistance is unavoidable even if a resistor is not specifically included as a component. RLC circuits have many applications as electronic oscillator, oscillator circuits. receiver (radio), Radio receivers and television sets use them for tuner (electronics), tuning to select a narrow frequency range from ambient radio waves. In this role, the circuit is often referred to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Capacitance
Capacitance is the capability of a material object or device to store electric charge. It is measured by the change in charge in response to a difference in electric potential, expressed as the ratio of those quantities. Commonly recognized are two closely related notions of capacitance: ''self capacitance'' and ''mutual capacitance''. An object that can be electrically charged exhibits self capacitance, for which the electric potential is measured between the object and ground. Mutual capacitance is measured between two components, and is particularly important in the operations of the capacitor, a device designed for this purpose as an elementary Linear circuit, linear electronic component. Capacitance is a function only of the geometry of the design of the capacitor, e.g., the opposing surface area of the plates and the distance between them, and the permittivity of the dielectric material between the plates. For many dielectric materials, the permittivity and thus the capaci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Decoupling Capacitor
A decoupling capacitor is a capacitor used to decouple one part of an electrical network (circuit) from another. Noise caused by other circuit elements is shunted through the capacitor, reducing its effect on the rest of the circuit. For higher frequencies an alternative name is bypass capacitor as it is used to bypass the power supply or other high impedance component of a circuit. Discussion Active devices of an electronic system (transistors, ICs, vacuum tubes, for example) are connected to their power supplies through conductors with finite resistance and inductance. If the current drawn by an active device changes, voltage drops from power supply to device will also change due to these impedances. If several active devices share a common path to the power supply, changes in the current drawn by one element may produce voltage changes large enough to affect the operation of others – voltage spikes or ground bounce, for example – so the change of state of one device is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electromigration
Electromigration is the transport of material caused by the gradual movement of the ions in a conductor due to the momentum transfer between conducting electrons and diffusing metal atoms. The effect is important in applications where high direct current densities are used, such as in microelectronics and related structures. As the structure size in electronics such as integrated circuits (ICs) decreases, the practical significance of this effect increases. History The phenomenon of electromigration has been known for over 100 years, having been discovered by the French scientist Gerardin. The topic first became of practical interest during the late 1960s when packaged ICs first appeared. The earliest commercially available ICs failed in a mere three weeks of use from runaway electromigration, which led to a major industry effort to correct this problem. The first observation of electromigration in thin films was made by I. Blech.I. Blech: ''Electromigration in Thin Aluminum Fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
