ESD III – Latent ESD Damage
ESD events sometimes doesn’t immediately destroy the devices but leaves a “latent defect”. This can cause a device failure later. Latent defects are not caught while testing as the device… Read more »
ESD II : ESD Protection Device
The principle of ESD protection devices is based on clamping the input voltage to a level that is safe for the IC to handle. In the circuitry given using Zener… Read more »
Electrostatic Discharge – I
ESD is something we come across in normal life, from lightning to the sudden shock experienced while touching certain materials. We however are interested more in the electronic kind, which… Read more »
OCV & AOCV
Process variation is a naturally occuring variation in the attributes of transistors(length, widths, oxide thickness) when integrated circuits are fabricated. These variations can be: Chip-to-chip There can be parameter difference… Read more »
Utility awk – Basics
The awk is a utility developed by Aho, Weinberger and Kerninghan (AWK). It is a pattern scanning and processing language.By default it reads from standard input and writes to standard… Read more »
ASIC Physical Design Flow
In the VLSI design cycle, after the circuit representation is complete, we go to “physical design”. This is the stage where the circuit description is transformed into a physical layout,… Read more »
Multicycle paths between different clock domains
We have seen set_multicycle_path constraint for timing path within a single clock domain. Now let’s explore multicycle paths with two synchronous clock domains of different frequencies. The SDC command set_multicycle_path… Read more »
Peak and Average Power
If you were to measure the power dissipated by a chip over a time period, the dissipated power vary at each instant of time. Peak power refers to the maximum… Read more »
Multi-VT Cells
At lower technology nodes, leakage power is proving to be a major component of power with the lowered supply and threshold voltage. One method to better balance power and timing… Read more »
Power Dissipation: Leakage Power
Part 1: Sources of Leakage Reduction of power consumption is a requirement for semiconductor devices. First let us list the sources of power to understand how to go about reducing… Read more »