2. Why IC development leaded to
high-tech revolution?
• Integrated in one chip circuits (IC) replaces large amount of
discrete components on the board.
• Almost all traditional discrete elements like:
Processors Digital Discrete Logic
Memories Analog blocks
can be integrated in one "piece of silicon" – chip
5. Introduction to VLSI circuit Industry
Introduction:
Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of
creating an integrated circuit by combining thousands of
transistors into a single chip (few mm2 few cm2).
Objectives:
Design “efficient” VLSI systems that has:
Circuit Speed (high)
Power consumption (low)
Design Area (low)
6. Fundamental Law of VLSI
Technology
• Gordon Moore: co-founder of Intel
• Observation that, over the history of computing hardware,
the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit
doubles approximately every 18 months.
• Today’s chips have close to 500 Million transistors
7. VLSI
FRONT END BACK END
Designing
& Testing Part
Development
& Fabrication Part
8. What is an ASIC?
• ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit)
Fixed Function chip
What is an FPGA?
• FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array)
Programmable chip
9. Processor Vs. FPGA
Processor:
Hardware functionality already
exists, software ‘programs’ use
of hardware
FPGA:
Hardware functionality
created by ‘programming’
PROGRAM GATES
PROGRAM INSTRUCTIONS
MEM
A B
ALU
HW FIXED HW CREATED
10. FPGA Vs. ASIC
Category FPGA ASIC
Design time / Time to Market + -
Design Cost + -
Performance [Speed, Power, Density] - +
Size [Area] - +
Total Cost + +
Changes to design + -
13. Here, vendors may want to get feedback from potential
customers on what they are looking for
• Instruction set
• Interface (I/O pins)
• Organization of the system
• Functionality of each unit in the system, and how to
communicate it to other units.
2. Specifications
14. 3. Design architecture
With the help of the specification sheet the target
IC’s architecture is decided and a layout for same is created
by design engineers using EDA tools.
EDA Tools
• Synopsys – astro
• Xilinx - ise design suite
• Cadence - encounter digital IC design
15.
16. 4. RTL coding
RTL - Register Transfer Level
This implies that the VHDL/VERILOG code written based
on the architecture describes how data is transformed as it is
passed from register to register.
RTL coding tools
• Xilinx ise,
• Vim,
• HDL TurboWriter
17. VHDL
• Not case sensitive.
• Difficult to learn.
• Based on pascal & ada.
• Strongly typed.
• Case sensitive.
• Easy to learn.
• Based on c.
• Not strongly typed.
HDL – Hardware Description Language
A programming language that can describe the functionality
and timing of the hardware.
Types of HDL
• VHDL
• VERILOG
• SYSTEM VERILOG
VERILOG
Difference
18. 5. RTL Verification
This ensures that the design is logically correct and
without major timing errors.
RTL verification tools
• Modelsim
• Verilog - XL
• Xilinx ise
20. 6. Synthesis
Logic synthesis is a process by which the desired circuit is
turned into a design in terms of logic gates which drives the
circuit or architecture.
Synthesis tools:
• FPGA - Altera, Digiland, Xilinx
• CPLD - Altera , Digiland
27. VLSI is suitabale for fabrication of larger number of
components on a single chip.
VHDL / Verilog is used for digital circuit designing and
to validate the design and check the design specification.
CONCLUSION
