MICROELECTRONIC SYSTEMS NEWS
FILENUMBER: 9708
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BOGAZICI ISTANBUL TURKEY
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DATE: November 1997
TITLE: ACTIVITIES IN MICROELECTRONIC SYSTEMS AT BOGAZICI UNIVERSITY, ISTANBUL, TURKEY
ACTIVITIES IN MICROELECTRONIC SYSTEMS AT BOGAZICI UNIVERSITY, ISTANBUL, TURKEY
Introduction
The activities in microelectronic systems at Bogazici University are
carried out in the VLSI design laboratory which was established in 1993 with
the aim of conducting research in various aspects of the evergrowing field
of Very Large Scale Integration and establishing links between industrial
companies in order to meet their ASIC demands. With the recruitment of new
faculty members with backgrounds in the field, new projects were sought for
and as a consequence of the received support from various sources both
internal to the university and the leading industrial companies, the VLSI
design lab. facilities are now housed in BETA which is named after the
(Bogazici University Electronic CAD Laboratory) in July 1996.
The laboratory is equipped with two Sun Sparc2, one Sun Sparcclassic, one
Sun Sparc4/110, one P200Mhz Linux PC and one Macintosh Performa 5400
workstations.
MentorGraphicsTM V. A.4-f & B.2 Electronic Design Automation software resides
on the UNIX workstations whereas Spice2G.6, Switcap, HSPICE, Magic 6.3,
Uncle 1.58, Ocean Sea-of-Gates Designer and Berkeley-SIS (for logic
optimization and synthesis) packages for Computer Aided Design of VLSI
circuits are available. Moreover, inhouse software is being developed to
support specific applications such as Analog Neural Network simulation and
training, automatic layout synthesis and compilation of analog cells,
silicon assemblers for analog cells and digital multipliers, high-level
synthesis of multi-rate systems and synthesizable VHDL libraries for DSP
applications. One Macintosh Quadra 900 and one Macintosh IIsi computers are
also available for the DesignWorksTM CAD package. A high performance A0 size
multi-pen plotter is connected to the computers. The laboratory is a member
of EuroPractice, through which ES2 (0.7um), and Mietec (0.7um and 0.35um CMOS,
2um HBiMOS) technologies and Design Kits are accessed. This membership
strongly urges the University - Industry partnership in ASIC design.
The BETA lab. includes the following state of the art electronic testing and
measurement equipment:
* One 4 channel, 1 Gigasample/second digital storage oscilloscope
* One 400 MHz 96 channel logic analyzer
* One Data I/O model 2900 Eprom, PLD programmer
* One ultra-high performance spectrum analyzer + tracking generator
* One precision synthesized RF signal generator
* Various signal generators and sweep generators
* Various pulse generators
* Various very high performance oscilloscopes
* Interference Contrast Microscope
* Various Microprocessor based acquisition and test systems
Since its establishment the VLSI design group is active in the following
areas:
* COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN: The commercial CAD tools are often not adequate
for specific VLSI design applications and as such, the following
software packages are being developed in BETA lab. and proved to be
advantageous for their purposes.
o Silicon Compiler for Multirate Systems
o Analog Silicon Compiler
o Analog Layout Synthesizer
o Digital Test System Design
o Silicon Assembler for Booth Multipliers
o Waveform relaxation based MOS VLSI circuit simulator
o Power, delay, and area estimation of CMOS arithmetic circuits
* DSP ARCHITECTURES: One of the applications in VLSI is for
telecommunication applications. Namely, ASICs in the form of processors
or codecs implementing a particular video coding or image compression
algorithm are often the best solution. The f ollowing processors are
implemented using a mixed bottom-up and top-down approach. A number of
these processors are currently in the process of final verification,
whereas the processors employing Wavelet transforms are ready for
fabrication:
o Morphological Filters for Image Processing
o 2-Band Wavelet Decomposition and Synthesis Architectures
o M-Band Wavelet Decomposition and Synthesis Architectures
o Shuffled Block Transform Processor
* DIGITAL BUILDING BLOCKS: Often it is necessary to design and
characterize own bulding blocks for digital systems. In addition to
processors, optimum design of critical data paths are one of the most
important areas in VLSI. The following blocks are designed and
charactarized for operation in Silicon. A number of these blocks have
been fabricated.
o Bit Level Pipelined Parallel Multiplier
o Digit Serial Multiplier
o Radix 2^n Multiplier
o Radix-2 Booth Encoded Multiplier
* NEURAL NETWORKS: The VLSI design group has also specialized on the
efficient design styles of Neural Networks which has become a choice in
many industrial applications such as quality inspection, intelligent
control and pattern recognition. Conventional implementations of
neural networks include software running on computers or dedicated
hardware. However, single chip implementations suffer from
non-idealities within the circuit. Thus, novel strategies should be
developed preferably in analog domain to resolve the application
difficulties encountered in industrial applications. The following
software packages have been developed for design automation
of analog neural networks:
o ANNSiS: Analog Neural Network Simulation system for proper
characterization of Neural ICs built based on analog modules.
o ANNSyS: Analog Neural Network Synthesis System including trainer
system using ANNSiS which is capable of performing automatic
layout synthesis.
The following work is also carried out for a complete design environment:
o Design and Implementation of Building Blocks for Multilayer
Perceptrons: A test IC is fabricated using MIETEC 2um double poly
CMOS technology. The aim is to characterize various floating gate
transistors for weight storage. The IC is delivered and the cha
racterization is underway. The preliminary results show prospect
for the usage of floating gate transistors. In addition a special
Op-Amp is also incorporated in this test chip which is a mixed
signal design. The Op-Amp is a novel design which is fully CMOS
with a built-in bias generator with no external settings. The test
results agreed very well with the expected results. Thus, in
addition to its possible applications this type of Op-Amp will
also constitute the building block of an Analog Neural Network as
a neuron.
* CONSUMER ELECTRONICS:
o I2C Bus Controlled Video Switch: This is an industrial design
implemented in MIETEC's HBIMOS technology, offering an improvement
and optimization in the TV systems. The design is fabricated and
test results show operation as expected.
o On Screen Display Unit: Another industrial design, to be
manufactured in CMOS technology.
* MISCELLANEOUS:
o ATM Switching Element: The next generation computer networks will
employ the Asynchronous Transfer Mode of packet switching. The
main goal here is to gain know-how in this filed. The current work
is a joint effort with the Computer enginnering department, in the
pursue of establishing a prototype ATM network. At this point an
ASIC implementing a 2x2 switching of ATM packets is already
developed in 1um ES2 technology and post layout simulations show a
speed of 155 Mbits/sec, which is the ATM standard. The next step
is to fabricate the IC and build a switching fabric to accomodate
the ATM protocol.
o Switched Capacitor Filters for Wavelet Transforms: The digital
implementations of Wavelet Transform consume a large silicon area,
although they prove to be effective for speed. However, for less
demanding applications, switched capacitor decimator interpolator
systems can be a better choice, thus consuming much less area. For
this purpose, a design has been completed.
o Sigma Delta A/D Converters: Sigma/Delta A/D conversion is one
of the most popular methods for high performance conversion. We
are also in the process of designing this type of a converter.
o Chaotic Circuits for Secure Communication: Chaotic time series
cannot be predicted unless the governing function is known.
Hence, they can be used for secure communication easily. An analog
current mode design is under way.
Other Microelectronic Design Centers in Turkey:
ETA: A design laboratory affiliated with ITU (Istanbul Technical
University). Involved with several industrial projects as well as
academical research.
TUBITAK (Turkish Council of Scientific and Technical Research): Involved
with several designs. Emphasis more on microelectronics fabrication
area. Houses a small 1 micron CMOS technology fabrication facility.
Netas: Subsidiary of Northern Telecom. Has an ASIC Design division which
designs ASICs necessary for their operation.
ALCATEL-Teletas: Subsidiary of Alcatel. Has an ASIC Design division which
designs ASICs necessary for their operation.
ASELSAN (Military Electronics Industry): Designs ASICs required by the
Turkish military.
METU: Middle Eastern Technical University - Ankara
Bilkent University - Ankara
BOGAZICI UNIVERSITY (Founded in 1863) Istanbul - TURKEY
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dbouldin@utk.edu
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