One of the hardest problems in digital circuit design is test pattern generation for a complex device. This is difficult in part because it requires reasoning about how to control a device whose behavior can be extremely complex. Knowledge of the specific operations that the device was designed to perform can help solve this problem. The key observation is that a device’s designed behavior is o...

This paper analyzes the issues that face digital circuit design methodologies and tools which address energy-efficient digital circuit sizing. The best known techniques for resolving these issues are presented, along with the sources of error. The analysis demonstrates that input slope independent models for energy and delay and stage based optimization are effective for analyzing and optimizin...

This paper describes an Electronics Manufacturing curriculum development project at Penn State. This pilot project is intended to enhance the design and practical experiences of undergraduate engineering students by combining the resources of the Electrical Engineering Department, the Industrial and Manufircturing Engineering Department, and the Center fbr Electronic Design, Communications, and...

The Haskell library Lava is great for describing the structure of digital circuits: large, regular circuits can be captured by short, clear descriptions. However, structural circuit description alone – and hence Lava – has a somewhat limited application domain. Many circuits are more appropriately expressed in terms of their desired behaviour. In this article, I present a Haskell library – call...

Asynchronous circuits have characteristics that differ significantly from those of synchronous circuits and, as will be clear from some of the later chapters in this book, it is possible exploit these characteristics to design circuits with very interesting performance parameters in terms of their power, performance, electromagnetic emissions (EMI), etc. Asynchronous design is not yet a well-es...

We present the structure of an analog integrated circuit design laboratory to instruct at both, senior undergraduate and entry graduate levels. The teaching material includes: a laboratory manual with analog circuit design theory, pre-laboratory exercises and circuit design specifications; a reference web page with step by step instructions and examples; the use of mathematical tools for automa...

Analog circuits are of great importance in electronic system design. Analog circuit design consists of circuit topology design and component values design. These two aspects are both essential to computer aided analog circuit evolving. However, Traditional GA is not very efficient in evolving circuit component’s values. This paper proposed a hybrid algorithm HME-GA (GA with hypermutation and el...

Superconducting Single-Flux-Quantum (SFQ) devices have been paid much attention as alternative devices for digital circuits, because of their high switching speed and low power consumption. For large-scale circuit design, the role of computer-aided design environment is significant. As the characteristics of the SFQ devices are different from conventional devices, a new design environment is re...

Formal Synthesis is a methodology developed at Kent for combining circuit design and veriication. We have reinterpreted this methodology in Isabelle's theory of higher-order logic so that circuits are synthesized using higher-order resolution. Our interpretation sim-pliies and extends Formal Synthesis both conceptually and in implementation. It also supports integration of this development styl...

This study examines the effect of library instruction on two sections of the same senior-level electrical engineering course in analog integrated circuit design. One section received a onehour library instruction session while the other section did not. The premise of the study is that inclusion of library instruction will result in higher utilization of scholarly resources in the students’ fin...