EE 466 (DIGITAL VLSI DESIGN)

2nd Examination
November 9, 2007

Problem 1: Delay Estimation [40 Points]

Parts (a) through (c) assume the Elmore Delay model.

A0
A1
A2
A3 AND
Vout A4
A5
A6
A7

(b) 8- input NAND gate

(a) Combinatorial Circuit

a) For the combinational circuit above (i) annotate transistor sizes that would result in
the circuit delivering as much current as a unit sized inverter (assume the unit sized
inverters Wp:Wn ratio of 2:1) . (ii) Provide the input capacitance of input signal D
(does not differ from that of input A, B, C or E). (iii) What is the value of the
intrinsic load capacitance?
b) Find (i) the worse case rise and fall times of this combinational logic circuit. (ii) Also
find the fastest rise and fall times. (Hint: For both questions b(i) and b(ii) you can first
determine the combination of inputs that results in the critical path (worse case delay)
and shortest path (best case delay)).
c) Provide the average propagation delay of each case in (b).
d) The 8-input CMOS AND gate must be designed to provide as much current as a unit
sized inverter (Wp:Wn ratio of 2:1). (i) Determine the A0s input capacitance. (ii) The
inverter of this AND gate is 10 times the unit sized inverter, determine the
intrinsic/internal loading of this gate.
e) Calculate the best path delay D of this gate. Equations of interest are:
1
CL
D NF N P, with F GBH , G g i , B bi , H , P pi N is the
C g1
number of stages.
f) It is impractical to design a gate with more than for devices in series. Please design an
equivalent 8-input AND gate that eliminates the long chain of series devices. (This
could use any logic style of your choice i.e. transmission gate, pass transistor logic,
pseudo-nMOS etc).
g) Provide the propagation delay of your proposed gate.
h) The delays of questions 1(d) through (g) have no units. What information would we
need to get the units of seconds?
Problem 2: Inverter Stages [40 points]

4
Initial Driver
400

An off chip capacitance load equivalent to 400 of transistor width has

to be driven by a chain of CMOS inverters. Assume the input
capacitance of a minimum size inverter is 4. Calculate the number of
inverter stages required and the resulting delay to drive the off chip
capacitance.
Problem 3: Digital Circuits Performance. [20 points]
a) Provide the equations for the three components of power.
b) An inverter is considered to a good representative CMOS circuit i.e.
if we understand how it operates and are able to perform its
performance analysis we can practically estimate other logic gates
performance. Inverters always dissipate short circuit power, would
this be true for the combinational circuit of the first figure? It there
is any possibility for short circuiting, would the short circuit current
of that circuit be of equal amount as that of a unit sized inverter?
c) The short circuit power equation has no capacitance (C L) as one of
the variables. Study the inverter circuit below and determine
whether short circuit power will increase or decrease with increasing
CL. Please justify your answer.

VDD

Vin

Vout

CL