An Online Course Content for Undergraduate Students on Full-Custom Design of a Digital VLSI Circuit Using Open-Source Software

Abstract

The Very Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) circuit design is a promising field for undergraduate students hoping to explore job opportunities in electronics circuit design companies. Therefore, several institutes in India offer VLSI courses to electronics engineering undergraduate students. In recent times, because of the pandemic, online classes appeared as an effective method of teaching; this helped in running of academic schedule smoothly without hampering the students’ learning process. In this paper online teaching content is presented to help the student learn digital VLSI circuit design using an open-source tool. This course content is particularly helpful in understanding the theoretical and practical design of a Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS)-based logic function, with minimal effort by the faculty without access to campus software. The content starts with a digital logic function and its switch-level representation into PULL-UP and PULL-DOWN networks. Then the switch-level circuit with the help of Euler’s graph is translated into a stick diagram and then converted into a layout cell using the lambda design rule. An interesting approach to choosing the gate sequence in the stick diagram from Euler’s graph, and the simulation result of the layout cell are presented and discussed. The approach helped the students in understanding full custom CMOS logic function design, test, and validation, with less effort and time. The survey shows that 86% of the students were satisfied with the content and that the course content helped to achieve an 81% average pass percentage in the two online semesters.