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CHAPTER
1
INTRODUCTION
The evolution of digital circuit design
n
Compelling issues in digital circuit design
n
How to measure the quality of a design
n
Valuable references
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
A Historical Perspective
Issues in Digital Integrated Circuit Design
Quality Metrics of a Digital Design
Summary
To Probe Further
9
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10
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1
1.1
A Historical Perspective
The concept of digital data manipulation has made a dramatic impact on our society. One
has long grown accustomed to the idea of digital computers. Evolving steadily from main-
frame and minicomputers, personal and laptop computers have proliferated into daily life.
More significant, however, is a continuous trend towards digital solutions in all other
areas of electronics. Instrumentation was one of the first noncomputing domains where the
potential benefits of digital data manipulation over analog processing were recognized.
Other areas such as control were soon to follow. Only recently have we witnessed the con-
version of telecommunications and consumer electronics towards the digital format.
Increasingly, telephone data is transmitted and processed digitally over both wired and
wireless networks. The compact disk has revolutionized the audio world, and digital video
is following in its footsteps.
The idea of implementing computational engines using an encoded data format is by
no means an idea of our times. In the early nineteenth century, Babbage envisioned large-
scale mechanical computing devices, called
Difference Engines
[Swade93]. Although
these engines use the decimal number system rather than the binary representation now
common in modern electronics, the underlying concepts are very similar. The Analytical
Engine, developed in 1834, was perceived as a general-purpose computing machine, with
features strikingly close to modern computers. Besides executing the basic repertoire of
operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) in arbitrary sequences, the
machine operated in a two-cycle sequence, called “store” and “mill” (execute), similar to
current computers. It even used pipelining to speed up the execution of the addition opera-
tion! Unfortunately, the complexity and the cost of the designs made the concept impracti-
cal. For instance, the design of Difference Engine I (part of which is shown in Figure 1.1)
required 25,000 mechanical parts at a total cost of £17,470 (in 1834!).
Figure 1.1
Working part of Babbage’s
Difference Engine I (1832), the first known
automatic calculator (from [Swade93],
courtesy of the Science Museum of
London).
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Section 1.1
A Historical Perspective
11
The electrical solution turned out to be more cost effective. Early digital electronics
systems were based on magnetically controlled switches (or relays). They were mainly
used in the implementation of very simple logic networks. Examples of such are train
safety systems, where they are still being used at present. The age of digital electronic
computing only started in full with the introduction of the vacuum tube. While originally
used almost exclusively for analog processing, it was realized early on that the vacuum
tube was useful for digital computations as well. Soon complete computers were realized.
The era of the vacuum tube based computer culminated in the design of machines such as
the ENIAC (intended for computing artillery firing tables) and the UNIVAC I (the first
successful commercial computer). To get an idea about
integration density,
the ENIAC
was 80 feet long, 8.5 feet high and several feet wide and incorporated 18,000 vacuum
tubes. It became rapidly clear, however, that this design technology had reached its limits.
Reliability problems and excessive power consumption made the implementation of larger
engines economically and practically infeasible.
All changed with the invention of the
transistor
at Bell Telephone Laboratories in
1947 [Bardeen48], followed by the introduction of the bipolar transistor by Schockley in
1949 [Schockley49]
1
. It took till 1956 before this led to the first bipolar digital logic gate,
introduced by Harris [Harris56], and even more time before this translated into a set of
integrated-circuit commercial logic gates, called the Fairchild Micrologic family
[Norman60]. The first truly successful IC logic family,
TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic)
was pioneered in 1962 [Beeson62]. Other logic families were devised with higher perfor-
mance in mind. Examples of these are the current switching circuits that produced the first
subnanosecond digital gates and culminated in the
ECL (Emitter-Coupled Logic)
family
[Masaki74]. TTL had the advantage, however, of offering a higher integration density and
was the basis of the first integrated circuit revolution. In fact, the manufacturing of TTL
components is what spear-headed the first large semiconductor companies such as Fair-
child, National, and Texas Instruments. The family was so successful that it composed the
largest fraction of the digital semiconductor market until the 1980s.
Ultimately, bipolar digital logic lost the battle for hegemony in the digital design
world for exactly the reasons that haunted the vacuum tube approach: the large power con-
sumption per gate puts an upper limit on the number of gates that can be reliably integrated
on a single die, package, housing, or box. Although attempts were made to develop high
integration density, low-power bipolar families (such as
I
2
L—Integrated Injection Logic
[Hart72]), the torch was gradually passed to the MOS digital integrated circuit approach.
The basic principle behind the MOSFET transistor (originally called IGFET) was
proposed in a patent by J. Lilienfeld (Canada) as early as 1925, and, independently, by O.
Heil in England in 1935. Insufficient knowledge of the materials and gate stability prob-
lems, however, delayed the practical usability of the device for a long time. Once these
were solved, MOS digital integrated circuits started to take off in full in the early 1970s.
Remarkably, the first MOS logic gates introduced were of the CMOS variety
[Wanlass63], and this trend continued till the late 1960s. The complexity of the manufac-
turing process delayed the full exploitation of these devices for two more decades. Instead,
An intriguing overview of the evolution of digital integrated circuits can be found in [Murphy93].
(Most of the data in this overview has been extracted from this reference). It is accompanied by some of the his-
torically ground-breaking publications in the domain of digital IC’s.
1
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12
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1
the first practical MOS integrated circuits were implemented in PMOS-only logic and
were used in applications such as calculators. The second age of the digital integrated cir-
cuit revolution was inaugurated with the introduction of the first microprocessors by Intel
in 1972 (the 4004) [Faggin72] and 1974 (the 8080) [Shima74]. These processors were
implemented in NMOS-only logic, which has the advantage of higher speed over the
PMOS logic. Simultaneously, MOS technology enabled the realization of the first high-
density semiconductor memories. For instance, the first 4Kbit MOS memory was intro-
duced in 1970 [Hoff70].
These events were at the start of a truly astounding evolution towards ever higher
integration densities and speed performances, a revolution that is still in full swing right
now. The road to the current levels of integration has not been without hindrances, how-
ever. In the late 1970s, NMOS-only logic started to suffer from the same plague that made
high-density bipolar logic unattractive or infeasible: power consumption. This realization,
combined with progress in manufacturing technology, finally tilted the balance towards
the CMOS technology, and this is where we still are today. Interestingly enough, power
consumption concerns are rapidly becoming dominant in CMOS design as well, and this
time there does not seem to be a new technology around the corner to alleviate the
problem.
Although the large majority of the current integrated circuits are implemented in the
MOS technology, other technologies come into play when very high performance is at
stake. An example of this is the BiCMOS technology that combines bipolar and MOS
devices on the same die. BiCMOS is used in high-speed memories and gate arrays. When
even higher performance is necessary, other technologies emerge besides the already men-
tioned bipolar silicon ECL family—Gallium-Arsenide, Silicon-Germanium and even
superconducting technologies. These technologies only play a very small role in the over-
all digital integrated circuit design scene. With the ever increasing performance of CMOS,
this role is bound to be further reduced with time. Hence the focus of this textbook on
CMOS only.
1.2
Issues in Digital Integrated Circuit Design
Integration density and performance of integrated circuits have gone through an astound-
ing revolution in the last couple of decades. In the 1960s, Gordon Moore, then with Fair-
child Corporation and later cofounder of Intel, predicted that the number of transistors that
can be integrated on a single die would grow exponentially with time. This prediction,
later called
Moore’s law,
has proven to be amazingly visionary [Moore65]. Its validity is
best illustrated with the aid of a set of graphs. Figure 1.2 plots the integration density of
both logic IC’s and memory as a function of time. As can be observed, integration com-
plexity doubles approximately every 1 to 2 years. As a result, memory density has
increased by more than a thousandfold since 1970.
An intriguing case study is offered by the microprocessor. From its inception in the
early seventies, the microprocessor has grown in performance and complexity at a steady
and predictable pace. The transistor counts for a number of landmark designs are collected
in Figure 1.3. The million-transistor/chip barrier was crossed in the late eighties. Clock
frequencies double every three years and have reached into the GHz range. This is illus-
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Section 1.2
Issues in Digital Integrated Circuit Design
13
64 Gbits
10
10
10
9
10
8
Number of bits per chip
256 Mbits
10
7
10
6
10
5
10
4
64 Mbits
*
0.08µm
Human memory
Human memory
Human DNA
Human DNA
4 Gbits
1 Gbits
0.15µm
0.15-0.2µm
0.25-0.3µm
0.35-0.4µm
0.5-0.6µm
Book
Book
16 Mbits
4 Mbits
0.7-0.8µm
1.0-1.2µm
1 Mbits
256 Kbits
1.6-2.4µm
64 Kbits
Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
2 hrs CD Audio
2 hrs CD Audio
30 sec HDTV
30 sec HDTV
Page
Page
1970
1980
1990
Year
2000
2010
(a) Trends in logic IC complexity
Figure 1.2
(b) Trends in memory complexity
Evolution of integration complexity of logic ICs and memories as a function of time.
trated in Figure 1.4, which plots the microprocessor trends in terms of performance at the
beginning of the 21
st
century. An important observation is that, as of now, these trends
have not shown any signs of a slow-down.
It should be no surprise to the reader that this revolution has had a profound impact
on how digital circuits are designed. Early designs were truly hand-crafted. Every transis-
tor was laid out and optimized individually and carefully fitted into its environment. This
is adequately illustrated in Figure 1.5a, which shows the design of the Intel 4004 micro-
processor. This approach is, obviously, not appropriate when more than a million devices
have to be created and assembled. With the rapid evolution of the design technology,
time-to-market is one of the crucial factors in the ultimate success of a component.
100000000
Pentium 4
10000000
Pentium III
Pentium II
Pentium ®
Transistors
1000000
486
386
100000
286 ™
8086
10000
4004
1000
1970
8080
8008
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
Year of Introduction
Figure 1.3
Historical evolution of microprocessor transistor count (from [Intel01]).
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