This research presents a methodology to evaluate data path topologies that implement a conditional statement for an average-case performance that is better than the worst-case performance. A conditional statement executes one of many alternatives depending on how Boolean conditions evaluate to true or false. Alternatives with simple computations take less time to execute. The self-timed designs can exploit the faster executing alternatives and provide an average-case behavior, where the average depends on the frequency of simple and complex computations, and the difference in the completion times of simple and complex computations. The frequency of simple and complex computations depends on a given workload. The difference in the completion times of a simple and complex computations depend on the choice of a data path topology. Conventional wisdom suggests that a fully-speculative data path, independent of the design style, yields the best performance. A fully-speculative data path executes all the choices or alternatives in a conditional statement in parallel and then chooses the correct result. Using a division algorithm as an example of an instruction that embodies a conditional statement, the proposed methodology shows that a fully-speculative design is suitable for a synchronous design but a less-speculative design is suitable for a self-timed design. Consequently, the results from the SPICE simulation of the extracted netlists show that on average, the self-timed divider is approximately 10% faster, consumes 42% less energy per division and 20% less area than the synchronous divider. In addition to the evaluation methodology, this research also presents the derivation of four new radix-2 division algorithms that offer a simpler quotient selection logic compared to the existing radix-2 division algorithms. A circuit optimization technique called Glissando is presented in this research. Glissando exploits a simple idea that the non-critical bits can arrive late at the input of the registers to reduce the delay of the data paths. The effect of the variations in manufacturing on the functionality of the divider designs is also analyzed in this research.

Integrated Circuit (IC) designs are increasingly moving towards Intellectual Property (IP) reuse for various targeted products and market segments. Therefore, there is a need to share and synergize internal bus architectures to enable the reuse of IP blocks for various ASIC and SoC applications. Due to the different market segments of various ASICs and SoCs, design teams and architects have opted to use customized internal bus architectures to suit the respective targeted features for their market segments. As a result, many ASIC and SoC companies that produce microprocessors for computers, microcontrollers for consumer electronics as well as memory and I/O controller chipsets have opted to use different internal interfaces, designs and IPs for the different products that they sell. A modular and configurable bus architecture that is flexible and capable of supporting IPs from various ASICs and SoCs would serve to solve many of the problems relating to IP reuse for various applications from a front end design perspective. There are several approaches to resolve this, for example, using a standard existing open source bus, a new all-encompassing bus that covers the needs of the majority of designs and a customization of a particular bus level such as the interface layer, where part of the bus features are fixed and the rest of them are determined by individual design groups. This research covers the analysis of existing bus architectures in industry and considers the various options for bus architecture optimization for design modularity, bus performance and IP reuse with existing technology. The architecture definition, design, logic simulation and performance comparisons of the proposed bus architecture on industry standard RTL design and validation tools was then conducted.

There are basically three methods of designing Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuits; Gate Array, Standard Cell, and Full Custom. The objective of this research is to design a VLSI circuit using the Standard Cell approach. A prime requisite for a successful design of these circuits is an integrated Computer Aided Design (CAD) system. The chip design requirements for an integrated CAD system are developed and their interrelationships are presented. As VLSI circuits grow in complexity, the problem of how to test them becomes more difficult. Two methods for testing are defined: 1. Insertion within the system of which the chip is a part, and use of standard system test techniques. 2. Self-test circuitry built into the chip. These testing techniques were used in the VLSI circuit in this report.

No description available.

An interactive software shell has been developed which integrates several packaging simulation tools developed at the University of Arizona which are used to analyze electro-magnetic coupling between interconnects in an integrated circuit. This software shell uses experimental frames to manage this simulation process. Through the experimental frames, the model descriptions and the model inputs are separated, and input data is verified for correctness. This model/input separation allows several model variations to be tested based on several input variations. The results of these simulations are then analyzed and displayed graphically. Further work for the software shell is discussed. This tool provides a user-friendly, efficient method for performing coupled-line analyses in interconnect systems.

published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The current trend towards miniaturization of modern consumer electronic devices significantly affects their design. The demand for efficient all-in-one appliances leads to smaller, yet more complex and powerful nanoelectronic devices. The increasing complexity in the design of such nanoscale Analog/Mixed-Signal Systems-on-Chip (AMS-SoCs) presents difficult challenges to designers. One promising design method used to mitigate the burden of this design effort is the use of metamodeling (surrogate) modeling techniques. Their use significantly reduces the time for computer simulation and design space exploration and optimization. This dissertation addresses several issues of metamodeling based nanoelectronic based AMS design exploration. A surrogate modeling technique which uses geostatistical based Kriging prediction methods in creating metamodels is proposed. Kriging prediction techniques take into account the correlation effects between input parameters for performance point prediction. We propose the use of Kriging to utilize this property for the accurate modeling of process variation effects of designs in the deep nanometer region. Different Kriging methods have been explored for this work such as simple and ordinary Kriging. We also propose another metamodeling technique Kriging-Bootstrapped Neural Network that combines the accuracy and process variation awareness of Kriging with artificial neural network models for ultra-fast and accurate process aware metamodeling design. The proposed methodologies combine Kriging metamodels with selected algorithms for ultra-fast layout optimization. The selected algorithms explored are: Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA), Simulated Annealing Optimization (SAO), and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed Kriging metamodel based methodologies can perform the optimizations with minimal computational burden compared to traditional (SPICE-based) design flows.

Analog CMOS amplifiers are the building blocks for many analog circuit applications such as Operational Amplifiers, Comparators, Analog to Digital converters and others. This dissertation presents empirical design methodologies that are both intuitive and easy to follow on how to design these basic building blocks. The design method involves two main phases. In the first phase NMOS and PMOS transistor design kits, provided by a semiconductor foundry, are fully characterized using a set of simulation experiments. In the second phase the user is capable of modifying all the relevant circuit design parameters while directly observing the tradeoffs in the circuit performance specifications. The final design is a circuit that very closely meets a set of desired design specifications for the design parameters selected. That second phase of the proposed design methodology utilizes a graphical user interface in which the designer moves a series of sliders allowing assessment of various design tradeoffs. The theoretical basis for this design methodology involves the transconductance efficiency and inversion coefficient parameters. In this dissertation there are no restrictive assumptions about the MOS transistor models. The design methodology can be used with any submicron model supported by the foundry process and in this sense the methods included within are general and non-dependent on any specific MOSFET model (e.g. EKV or BSIM3). As part of the design tradeoffs assessment process variations are included during the design process rather than as part of some post-nominal-design analysis. One of the central design parameters of each transistor in the circuit is the MOSFET inversion coefficient. The calculation of the inversion coefficient necessitates the determination of an important process parameter known as the Technology Current. In this dissertation a new method to determine the technology current is developed. Y Parameters are used to characterize the CMOS process and this also helps in improving the technology current determination method. A study of the properties of the technology current proves that indeed a single long channel saturated MOS transistor can be used to determine a fixed technology current value that is used in subsequent submicron CMOS design. Process corners and the variability of the technology current are also studied and the universality of the transconductance efficiency versus inversion coefficient response is shown to be true even in the presence of process variability. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.

Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) has a dominating market in digital system prototyping and reconfigurable computing. To make a flexible and efficient FPGA chip both the hardware architecture and the design tool should be further engineered. An innovative architecture always requires excellent development of EDA tools to fully explore the intrinsic merits of the hardware. / FPGA Technology Mapping is an important design automation problem which affects placement and routing dramatically. Depth-optimal technology mapping algorithms were proposed and produced quality mapping solution for delay minimization. However such algorithms have not yet considered to further reduce area consumption using the powerful logic transformation techniques. / On hardware side, we present a study on the effect of direct and fast routing hard-wires in FPGA routing architecture. Based on the routing pattern analyzed from real routing data, we proposed a so-called shortcut -based routing to handle short and localized routing requirements. Experimental results show that the shortcuts are well utilized and it allows a better average wirelength usage in the whole routing architecture. / On software side, we propose a versatile approach to combine logic transformation and technology mapping. In addition to a level-reduction scheme, we also present a method of reducing the number of LUTs used while keeping the depth optimality. Our approach is based on a greedy but effective heuristic to choose good alternative wires for transformation. Large number of experiments were conducted to analyze the effectiveness of the system. Our results show that our approach can effectively reduce at least 5% (up to 25%) of the area over initial mapping by various state-of-the-art FPGA technology mappers. Furthermore, we found that the delay performance can be improved by 5% when the area is reduced by our system. / Tang, Wai Chung. / Adviser: David Yu-Liang Wu. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: B, page: 3704. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-74). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Ho, Marco. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.