VLSI - 2 ( Analog)

For those of you who wanted to make a career in analog, be a devotee of IIT Madras faculty irrespective of which IIT or which college you end up joining for your Mtech.

1. Shanti Pavan - IIT Madras videos
2. Nagendra Krishnapura - IIT Madras videos
3. Razavi - Videos and Text book
4. Anirudhan  - IIT Madras videos

I would like to discuss few common blunders, that we end up doing, which henceforth make us loose confidence in analog

Mistake 1 :  Two current sources in series

In simulation if you put two current sources in series and simulate this, you observe some crazy things happen, kindly do this and learn on this.

Put up a current source with NMOS sinking the current with very low Vgs and observe

Repeat the experiment with PMOS too. Try increasing the sizing for the same Vgs and observe what happens.

This experiments are really the most powerful in analog. The deeper one digs into this, the faster he understands the analog concepts well.

Spend great time dealing with this circuit.

Feel free to discuss if any doubts.......

Will come back with the next post. and discuss the solution and concepts here.

VLSI - 1

Without doubt, VLSI is top branch of ECE which fascinates many graduates and also a hot cake, henceforth making it a very competitive branch to get into even in your Mtech.

Roughly one can divide VLSI into 3 specializations:

Analog VLSI
Digital VLSI
Device Electronics

Analog VLSI  --- is something that really fascinates many VLSI students but often, doesn't become a career option for many of those bright students. It is much more than the coding stuff. Analog needs your thinking cap to be on always. It needs understanding of device physics too to a reasonable extent.

Any chip that gets taped out has all blocks of analog, digital. Band gap ckts, Reference current sources, IO components, PLLs, Amplifiers, filters, transmitters, receivers and many blocks are all analog in nature.

Most of the digital stuff are coded and even the interface circuits that is A/D convertors, sensors, and D/A convertors are all analog blocks !!!

The real world is analog in nature and any advancements we talk about DSP, can be appreciated only if u have proper interface circuits to convert the analog signal to digital and do DSP and convert it back to analog again.