VLSI Course Notes

VLSI Course Notes

What's this?

These slides comprise the visual aids and handouts that we created for a VLSI design course taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Computer Science Department in the spring of 1998. Although there is a great deal of information here, it is not a complete course or textbook: you'll have to imagine the lecture commentary that links the slides together.

The emphasis here is on full-custom high-performance layout at the transistor level. A basic knowledge of electronics is assumed.

Who's fault is all this?

The lead instructor for the course was Dr. John W. Poulton, research professor of computer science.

Stephen Tell, senior research associate, assisted with the course, provided tools support for the students, and presented a few lectures and partial lectures, mainly those dealing with use of the design tools.

Dr. Gary Bishop, associate professor of computer science, supervised the final project portion of the course, but made no significant contributions to these notes.

Disclaimers

While every effort was made to accurately present the material, typographical errors and errors in content undoubtedly slipped in. Many of the slides were created late at night or only a few minutes before class began. Several sections would be significantly overhauled if the course were taught again. Some thoughts on the material two years after the course can be found in the release notes.

We regret that we are unable to answer detailed questions on the course material or otherwise support this material at this time. No solutions to the homework exercises are available.

We are however interested in exchanging ideas with other VLSI designers and researchers. Depending on the circumstances, there may be opportunities in the research program at UNC or with other VLSI-related endeavors we may have contact with.

Please direct comments and fan mail to Steve Tell; comments recieved will be shared with all authors.

Legal Stuff

Copyright 1998, 2000 John W. Poulton and Stephen G. Tell. All Rights Reserved.

This material may be freely distributed under the terms of the OpenContent organization's Open Publication License, a copy of which has been included here in HTMLand plain text formats.

Enough Already

Lets get on with the VLSI Course Notes.