Advanced VLSI Design Quality Metrics of a Digital Design I CMPE 640

Basic Properties of a Digital Design

These help quantify the quality of a design from different perspectives:
• Cost
• Functionality
• Robustness
• Performance
• Energy consumption

Which of these criteria is important is dependent on the application:

Performance is important for compute servers.
Energy consumption is a dominant metric for cell-phones.

The following analysis focuses on the quality metrics of a simple inverter.

These carry forward to the analysis of more complex entities discussed
later.

Before doing so, let’s consider the cost of an integrated circuit.

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Advanced VLSI Design Quality Metrics of a Digital Design I CMPE 640

Cost of an Integrated Circuit

Total cost of a product can be broken down into two basic components:
• Recurring expenses (variable cost).
• Non-recurring expenses (fixed cost).

Fixed cost is INdependent of sales volume.

Includes effort in time and manpower it takes to produce the design.
Indirect costs (company overhead that cannot be billed directly to one
product), e.g., R&D, manufacturing equipment, marketing, etc.

Variable cost accounts for cost directly attributable to a manufactured prod-

uct.
It is proportional to the product volume and includes:
• Material cost
• Assembly cost
• Testing cost

Total cost:
cost/IC = variable cost per IC + (fixed cost/volume)

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Advanced VLSI Design Quality Metrics of a Digital Design I CMPE 640

Cost of an Integrated Circuit

It follows that:
• The impact of fixed cost is more pronounced for small-volume products.
• The design of a microprocessor can afford to support a large design team.

The cost to produce a transistor has dropped exponentially over the past
decades.

However, the form of the equation for variable cost has not changed:
Cost of die + Cost of die test + Cost of packaging
Variable cost = -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Final test yield

Cost of wafer
Cost of die = ------------------------------------------------------
Dies/wafer × Die yield

We will focus on the cost of the die in this analysis.

It’s clear that Cost of die is related to chip area.

The bigger the die, the more it costs since “Dies/wafer” gets smaller.

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Advanced VLSI Design Quality Metrics of a Digital Design I CMPE 640

Cost of an Integrated Circuit

The actual relation between cost and area is more complex and depends on
die yield.

Die yield is related to the number of defects, the size of the die and the com-
plexity of the manufacturing process.

Under the assumptions that:

• Defects are randomly distributed over the wafer.
• Yield is inversely proportional to the complexity of the fabrication process.
Die yield can be expressed as:

 Defects per unit area × Die size – α

Die yield = 1 + ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 α 

α is related to the number of masks, a measure of process complexity.

It is approximately 3.0 today.

Defects per unit area depends heavily on the maturity of the process but the
range 0.5 to 1.0 per cm2 is typical.

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Advanced VLSI Design Quality Metrics of a Digital Design I CMPE 640

Cost of an Integrated Circuit

For example, assume:
• Wafer size is 12 inches
• Die size is 2.5 cm2
• 1 defects/cm2
• α is 3
What is the die yield?

Dies per wafer (which takes into account the dies lost along the perimeter):
2
π × ( wafer diameter ⁄ 2 ) π × wafer diameter
Dies/wafer = ------------------------------------------------------------ – ---------------------------------------------
die area 2 × die area

Plugging in yields 252 (=296 - 44) "potentially" operational die.

Plugging in for die yield gives 16%!

Therefore, on average, only 40 dies will be functional.

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Advanced VLSI Design Quality Metrics of a Digital Design I CMPE 640

Cost of an Integrated Circuit

The bottom line:
The number of good dies/wafer = dies/wafer * die yield.
The larger and/or more complex the chip, the more costly -- its NOT a
linear relationship.

4
Cost of die = f ( die area ) for α = 3.0

The designer is going to be interested in using smaller gates, for two reasons:
• They reduce die size.
• Smaller gates tend to be faster and consume less energy.
Total gate capacitance (a dominant performance parameter) often scales
with area.

The # of transistors in a gate is often indicative of implementation area,

although complex interconnect can cause wiring area to dominate.

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Advanced VLSI Design Quality Metrics of a Digital Design I CMPE 640

Functionality and Robustness

Measured behavior of a manufactured gate normally deviates from the
expected response because:
• Variations in manufacturing process (process variations)
Dimensions, threshold voltage and currents of a MOS transistor can vary
significantly between runs, between wafers, and within chips.
• Noise sources
Unwanted variations of voltages and currents at the logic nodes.

Inductive coupling Capacitive coupling Power and Ground Noise.

Most noise sources are internal and proportional to the logic swing
while external noise source amplitudes are not related to signal levels.

Coping with these is a major challenge in high performance circuit design.

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Advanced VLSI Design Quality Metrics of a Digital Design I CMPE 640

Functionality and Robustness

Steady-state parameters of a gate (static behavior) determine how robust it is
to manufacturing and noise variations.

Their analysis requires an understanding of how digital signals are repre-

sented in electronic circuits.

The transformation of an electrical voltage into a discrete variable (logic value

abstraction) is accomplished via the definition of nominal voltage levels.
• VOH: High logic level.
• VOL: Low logic level.

The difference between VOH and VOL is called the logic or signal swing, Vsw.

The electrical function of a gate is expressed by its voltage-transfer characteris-

tic (VTC) or DC transfer characteristic.

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Advanced VLSI Design Quality Metrics of a Digital Design I CMPE 640

Functionality and Robustness

VTC for an inverter.
A graph that plots output voltage as a function of the input voltage:
Vout = f(Vin).

VOH slope = -1 VOH = f(VOL)

"1" VOH
NMH
f VIH
Vout Vin=Vout
VM (gate threshold voltage) Undefined
region
slope = -1 VIL
VOL VOL = f(VOH) NML
"0" VOL
VOL VIL VIH VOH Vin
voltage -> logic
Undefined region

Even when an ideal input signal is applied to the input, the output often
deviates from the ideal, due to noise and output loading.

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Advanced VLSI Design Quality Metrics of a Digital Design I CMPE 640

Functionality and Robustness

Large "1" and "0" intervals are desirable.

A measure of the sensitivity of a gate to noise is given by noise margins:

• NML (noise margin low) = VIL - VOL
• NMH (noise margin high) = VOH - VIH
"1"
VOH
NMH
VIH
Undefined
region
VIL
NML
VOL
"0"
Gate Gate
output input

Stage M Stage M + 1

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Advanced VLSI Design Quality Metrics of a Digital Design I CMPE 640

Functionality and Robustness

For example:
VDD VIL = 0.8

Vin Vout 0.9V

Vout
Vin
0.9V
VIH = 1.3 VDD
Assume output nominal voltages are:
• VOH = 1.7V
• VOL = 0.1V

NML = VIL - VOL = 0.8 - 0.1 = 700mV

NMH = VOH - VIH = 1.7 - 1.3 = 400mV

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Advanced VLSI Design Quality Metrics of a Digital Design I CMPE 640

Functionality and Robustness

Regenerative Property:
Large noise margins are desirable but not a sufficient requirement.
The gate must also possess the regenerative property.

It’s regenerative if the accumulation of additional noise sources does NOT

drive the signal into the undefined region.
out out
f(v) finv(v)
v1 v1
finv(v) One stable f(v)
Two stable operating
operating point
points v2 v0 in v0 v2 in
Regenerative Nonregenerative
Regenerative requires that the |gain| be greater than 1 in the "transient"
(undefined) region, bordered by regions with gains less than 1.
Points VIH and VIL define the borders.

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Advanced VLSI Design Quality Metrics of a Digital Design I CMPE 640

Functionality and Robustness

Noise immunity
Noise margins expresses the capability of a circuit to "overpower" a noise
source.

Noise immunity expresses the ability of a system to process and transmit

information correctly in the presence of noise.

Many digital circuits with low noise margins have good noise immunity
because the reject a noise source rather than overpower it.
These circuits allow only a small fraction of the noise source to cou-
ple to important circuit nodes.

Noise sources, as mentioned, are divided into:

• Sources proportional to the logic swing, Vsw:
Impact on signal node is gVsw.
• Sources that are fixed:
Impact on signal node is fVNf with VNf is the amplitude of noise
source and f is transfer function from noise source to signal node.

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Advanced VLSI Design Quality Metrics of a Digital Design I CMPE 640

Functionality and Robustness

Noise immunity
Assume the noise margins are half the voltage swing.
For correct operation, the noise margins have to be larger than the sum of
the noise values:
V sw
V NM = ---------- ≥ ∑ f i V
Nfi ∑ j sw
+ g V
2 i j

Therefore, the minimum signal swing necessary of system operation is:

2∑ f iV
Nfi
i
V sw ≥ --------------------------
1 – 2∑ g j
j
The signal swing (and noise margin) has to be large enough to over-
power the fixed sources, fiVNfi.
However, increasing Vsw does not work for internal sources.
Here, gj must be small. (The impact of the internal sources is depen-
dent upon the noise suppressing capabilities of the gate).

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