EEC 116 - VLSI Design
Final Project Winners

Fall 2010
Project: This project requires the design and layout of a datapath for a simple 8-bit processor that performs five basic operations, has two enable-able output registers, and two individually-controllable input ports. The circuits of the chip are shown below. The inputs are: a 16-bit in, and single bit clear, and clk. The outputs are 16-bit max, min, and acc. Operation of the chip begins by setting clear=1 for at least one cycle to clear all three outputs. The output acc is the accumulated sum, max is the current maximum, and min is the current minimum of all inputs since the last clearing operation. Chips include clock trees, power rings and grid, Vdd/Gnd/input/output I/O pads with the output pad sufficient for driving a 10 pF load. Students produced all layout themselves. The chips were laid out using TSMC's 0.18 μm CMOS and scalable design rules. Block diagram (chip) Block diagram (top) Overall class area x delay Overall class chip-core area Min: 17,036 μm² Max: 682,683 μm² Median: 52,622 μm² Ratio max/min: 40.1! Overall class delay Min: 0.95 ns Max: 12,490 ns Median: 28.40 ns Ratio max/min: 13,147!
First place winners
	Chip core	Entire chip
Sean Burkhardt-Corcoran Mohammad Amin Heydari Core Area x Delay = 16,116 μm²⋅ns Core Area = 17,036 μm² Core Delay = 0.95 ns
Second place winners
	Chip core	Entire chip
Val Apgar Matthew Spriggs Core Area x Delay = 242,062 μm²⋅ns Core Area = 52,622 μm² Core Delay = 4.60 ns

Winter 2010
Project: The purpose of this project is to lay out the major portions of a simple digital chip that accumulates and finds the maximum and minimum of a series of input numbers. The circuits of the chip are shown below. The inputs are: a 16-bit in, and single bit clear, and clk. The outputs are 16-bit max, min, and acc. Operation of the chip begins by setting clear=1 for at least one cycle to clear all three outputs. The output acc is the accumulated sum, max is the current maximum, and min is the current minimum of all inputs since the last clearing operation. Chips include clock trees, power rings and grid, Vdd/Gnd/input/output I/O pads with the output pad sufficient for driving a 10 pF load. Students produced all layout themselves. The chips were laid out using TSMC's 0.18 μm CMOS and scalable design rules. Block diagram (chip) Block diagram (top) Overall class area x delay :Overall class area Min: 43,500 μm² Max: 334,000 μm² Ratio max/min: 7.7 :Overall class delay Min: 2.20 ns Max: 50.0 ns Ratio max/min: 22.7
First place winners
	Chip core	Entire chip
Brian Zimmer Ritesh Patel Core Area x Delay = 201,695 μm²⋅ns Core Area = 25,275 μm² Core Delay = 7.92 ns
Second place winners
	Chip core	Entire chip
David Tu Ivan Charcos Core Area x Delay = 229,115 μm²⋅ns Core Area = 37,933 μm² Core Delay = 6.04 ns

2009
Project: The purpose of this project is to design and layout a chip which contains a high-speed programmable digital filter. Filters are one of the most common blocks found in digital signal processors, which are increasingly popular in many electronic systems. The filter is a 5-tap or 5-coefficient finite impulse response (FIR) filter and has a saturator at its output. It processes one sample every clock cycle enabling very high data throughputs. The values of the coefficients determine the specifications and type of the filter (e.g. low-pass, high-pass, etc.). The filter is composed of five identical slices which each consist of three major components: 1) a multiplier, 2) an adder, and 3) registers made up of flip-flops. Chips include clock trees, power rings and grid, Vdd/Gnd/input/output I/O pads with the output pad sufficient for driving a 10 pF load. Students produced all layout themselves. The chips were laid out using TSMC's 0.18 μm CMOS and scalable design rules. The two core chip plots below are shown to scale with respect to each other. Block diagram (chip) Block diagram (top) Overall class area x delay Overall class area: Min: 43,500 μm² Max: 334,000 μm² Ratio max/min: 7.7 Overall class delay: Min: 2.20 ns Max: 50.0 ns Ratio max/min: 22.7
First place winners
	Chip core	Entire chip
Quyen Phung Yuan Hui Li Core Area x Delay = 152,900 μm²⋅ns Core Area = 69,500 μm² Core Delay = 2.20 ns
Second place winners
	Chip core	Entire chip
Gary Chung Jon Pimentel Core Area x Delay = 165,735 μm²⋅ns Core Area = 43,500 μm² Core Delay = 3.81 ns

2008
Project: The purpose of this project is to design and layout a chip which contains a high-speed digital low-pass filter. Filters are one of the most common blocks found in digital signal processors, which are increasingly popular in many electronic systems. The filter is a 7-tap finite impulse response (FIR) filter and has a saturator at its output. It processes one complete sample every clock cycle enabling very high data throghputs. The filter consists of three components: 1) multipliers, 2) adders, and 3) registers made up of flip-flops. The purpose of the saturator is to clamp or saturate the filter's output from a maximum of 620 to a maximum of 255--so it fits into an 8-bit word. The filter is highly pipelined into 7 pipeline stages. Chips include clock trees, power rings and grid, Vdd/Gnd/input/output I/O pads with the output pad sufficient for driving a 10 pF load. Students produced all layout themselves. The chips were laid out using TSMC's 0.18 μm CMOS and scalable design rules. Datapath block diagrams: Filter and saturator, filter, multiplier. Block diagram (chip) Block diagram (top) Overall class area x delay Overall class area: Min: 2,409,940 λ² Max: 4,079,496 λ² Ratio max/min: 1.7 Overall class delay: Min: 0.34 ns Max: 0.51 ns Ratio max/min: 1.5
First place winners
	Chip core	Entire chip
Greg Fattig Allen Tang Core Area x Delay = 819,379 λ²⋅ns Core Area = 2,409,940 λ² = 19,520 μm² Core Delay = 0.34 ns
Second place winners
	Chip core	Entire chip
Ba Duong Yifan Liu Core Area x Delay = 2,080,542 λ²⋅ns Core Area = 4,079,496 λ² = 33,044 μm² Core Delay = 0.51 ns

2007
Project: In this project, students design and layout a chip which contains an array of 100 processors that sorts a stream of 100 unsigned 8-bit numbers at very high speed. The chip uses a type of bubble sorting algorithm where data flows through 100 2-element sorting processors (rather than one processor making 100 passes through the data set as would happen in a common software implementation). If a single-issue RISC processor requires 7 cycles to perform a single comparison and swap (load, load, subtract, branch, store, store, incr_counter), to maintain the same performance as a 1.0 GHz array of processors, the RISC processor would have to run at 700 GHz! Each processor is pipelined and includes reset and data valid input and output signals. Chips include clock trees, power rings and grid, Vdd/Gnd/input/output I/O pads with the output pad sufficient for driving a 10 pF load. Students produced all layout themselves. The chips were laid out using TSMC's 0.18 μm CMOS and scalable design rules. Block diagram (processor and core) Block diagram (chip) Block diagram (top) Overall class area x delay Overall class area: (one processor) Min: 379,735 λ² Max: 4,427,821 λ² Median: 445,176 λ² Ratio max/min: 11.7 Overall class delay: Min: 0.71 ns Max: 10.00 ns Median: 1.25 ns Ratio max/min: 14.1
First place winners
	Chip core	Entire chip
Anh Tran Ning Xu Core Area x Delay = 35,394,551 λ²⋅ns Core Area = 49,851,481 λ² Core Delay = 0.71 ns
Second place winners
	Chip core	Entire chip
Khadar Shaik Eian Vizzini Core Area x Delay = 63,670,687 λ²⋅ns Core Area = 50,936,550 λ² Core Delay = 1.25 ns
2006
Project: Full-custom histogram calculator chip which computes an 8-point histogram on an arbitrary stream of inputs with up to 255 inputs per histogram "bin". The datapath is pipelined and includes reset and read out modes, and special circuits to aid in measuring the processor's critical path. Chips include clock trees, power rings and grid, Vdd/Gnd/input/output I/O pads with the output pad sufficient for driving a 10 pF load. Students produced all layout themselves. The chips were laid out using TSMC's 0.18 μm CMOS and scalable design rules with λ = 0.09μm. Block diagram (processor) Block diagram (chip-level) Overall class area x delay Overall class area: Min: 836,300 λ² Max: 4,300,000 λ² Median: 1,675,300 λ² Ratio max/min: 5.1 Overall class delay: Min: 1.64 ns Max: 4.99 ns Median: 1.96 ns Ratio max/min: 3.1
First place winners
	Chip core	Entire chip
Neil Jacklin Kyle Piper Core Area x Delay = 1,558,700 λ²⋅ns Core Area = 927,800 λ² Core Delay = 1.68 ns
Second place winners
	Chip core	Entire chip
Brent Bohnenstiehl Maggie Zhang Core Area x Delay = 2,081,700 λ²⋅ns Core Area = 1,062,100 λ² Core Delay = 1.96 ns
Honorable mention (smallest area)
	Chip core	Entire chip
Sam Lee Jia Ming Mar Core Area x Delay = 2,500,500 λ²⋅ns Core Area = 836,300 λ² Core Delay = 2.99 ns
2005
Project: Full-custom chip which calculates the accumulated sum, maximum input, and minimum input of a stream of 8-bit input data. The datapath is pipelined and includes reset circuits for all three outputs. Chips include clock trees, power rings and grid, Vdd/Gnd/input/output I/O pads with the output pad sufficient for driving a 10 pF load. Students produced all layout themselves. The chips were laid out using TSMC's 0.18 μm CMOS and scalable design rules with λ = 0.09μm. Overall class area x delay Overall class area: Min: 545,600 λ² Max: 3,182,652 λ² Median: 840,984 λ² Ratio max/min: 5.8 Overall class delay: Min: 0.39 ns Max: 5.00 ns Median: 1.31 ns Ratio max/min: 12.8
First place winners
	Chip core	Entire chip
Chi Chen Tyrone Tracy Core Area x Delay = 212,784 λ²⋅ns Core Area = 545,600 λ² Core Delay = 0.39 ns
Second place winners
	Chip core	Entire chip
Brian Swenson Matthew Kong Core Area x Delay = 323,084 λ²⋅ns Core Area = 547,600 λ² Core Delay = 0.59 ns


2004
Project: Layout for a full-custom chip which has three primary inputs: an 8-bit data word, a valid signal, and a clear signal. The circuit has a switchable output that shows one of two values: 1) the accumulation of all inputs since the last clear, and 2) the maximum value since that last clear. The datapath is pipelined and includes necessary reset circuits. Chips include clock trees, power rings and grid, Vdd/Gnd/input/output I/O pads with the output pad sufficient for driving a 10 pF load. Students produced all layout themselves. The chips were laid out using TSMC's 0.18 μm CMOS and scalable design rules with λ = 0.09μm. Overall class area Min: 638,448 λ² Max: 9,037,825 λ² Ratio max/min: 14.2 Overall class delay Min: 5.38 ns Max: 40.0 ns Ratio max/min: 7.4
First place winners

Andy Swing Steven Tin Core Area x Delay = 5,209,736 λ²⋅ns Core Area = 638,448 λ² Core Delay = 8.16 ns
Second place winners

Andrew Luo Sofia Hao Core Area x Delay = 6,193,937 λ²⋅ns Core Area = 891,214 λ² Core Delay = 6.95 ns

EEC 116 | ECE Dept. | UC Davis

Last update: June 18, 2009

EEC 116 - VLSI DesignFinal Project Winners

EEC 116 - VLSI Design
Final Project Winners