In the paper, we present our latest achievements and experience in undergraduate teaching of digital circuits, integrated circuits and embedded systems by exploiting our prototyping hardware and software environment. The hardware environment is based on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) modules that provide sufficient flexibility and support a broad scope of digital design applications. In a...

IC design is in a revolutionary phase at present. It could even be said that IC design is at the beginning of a new epoch. Design is moving toward nano-size. Thus, design techniques are advancing so rapidly that existing design knowledge quickly becomes obsolete. The IC design industry needs engineers with an integrated design perspective, real hands-on experience and well developed skills in p...

A 2-digit higher radix analog-to-digital converter (ADC) circuit consisting of a combination of a pipelined ADC and a set of cascaded current comparator cell has been proposed. The ADC generates multi-valued logic outputs rather than the conventional binary output system. The design is implemented using 0.25μm CMOS process. The performance analysis of the design shows desirable performance para...

The current state of the art in integrated circuit design is based on the use of special hardware design languages such as VHDL. In the context of the development of an intelligent, knowledge-based debugging aid for VHDL programs, we are dealing with analysis and diagnosis of a subset of VHDL (which is similar to conventional concurrent programming languages). We present an adaptation of conven...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques are applied to develop a framework for the design and layout of MMIC circuits. This framework addresses key aspects of the design process, from circuit specification and initial design decisions through to final layout and preparation of the circuit for fabrication. A number of knowledge-based systems are incorporated into the framework to assist in speci...

This thesis presents a system for optimization of analog circuit topologies and component values. The topology is optimized using simulated annealing, while the component values are optimized using gradient descent. Local minima are avoided and constraints are kept through the use of coordinate transformations, as well as the use of default starting points for component values. The system is ta...

This paper presents a fully configurable framework for analog integrated circuit design automation. The goal of this framework, named as UCAF, is to provide in a single environment several optimization heuristics, design methodologies and technology options in order to allow for the designer the possibility to perform a set of comparisons and selections aiming the optimized design. UCAF was imp...

Analog integrated circuits (ICs) design is a complex task due to the large number of input variables that must be determined simultaneously in order to achieve different multiple design goals of an analog integrated circuit design, such as voltage gain (AV), unit voltage gain frequency (fT), slew-rate (SR), harmonic distortion (THD), etc. By using an evolutionary system based on Genetic Algorit...

There will be four tutorial tracks on the first day of the 2003 International Symposium on Quality Electronics Design. The tutorials included in these tracks are selected among the most popular topics in today's electronics industry. The IEEE Computer Society TTTC Test Technology Educational Program continues to support ISQED with tutorials on test topics. TTTC will be organizing the tutorial t...