Course content reaffirmed: 06/2015--The access of a memory cell starts when the Word Line is asserted which is controlled by the Word Line Driver and the Row Decoder. This tutorial will focus on the design of the Row Decoder starting with an overview of a basic decoder, and then will describe a greatly improved version that is faster and presents a smaller load to the Address Buffers. The Word Line Driver will be designed such that it is controlled by an internal clock which is critical to the overall timing associated with reading and writing the memory cell. Additional enhancements to the Word Line Driver will be made to reduce the layout area so that it can fit in the small pitch of a memory cell and have increased performance.
Course content reaffirmed: 06/2015--The overall data path of a memory can be divided into two paths - the read path and the write path. This tutorial focuses on the write path of an SRAM. The write path has some unique requirements that the read path does not have, although there are some similarities as well. This design will include: the internal decoding for a write, the data in buffer and key control circuits along with their timing relationships. The overall integration of the write and read path will be designed thereby making up the complete data path into and out of the memory cell. A complete set of plots are provided along with a SPICE netlist that is extracted from the layout.
Course content reaffirmed: 06/2015--There are several important timings that must be considered when designing the Data In Buffer that go beyond amplifying the input signal to drive the data to be written into the bit cell. The control timing must be such that the hold time for data in from the customer can be zero and not cause a change on the pin to propagate all the way to the bit cell and disturb what was just written. This tutorial makes a deeper evaluation of the timing paths that must be considered between clock and data in.
This course is part of our eLearning Archive, which includes older courses that may not be current or as user-friendly as courses designed more recently. This course will introduce important issues in preparing, designing, and developing a product including: Systems Engineering "Process, design, and development; Architecture" Hardware, Software, Tradeoffs; Interface choices; Reliability versus fault tolerance; Review and Testing - Debugging, inspections, integration, validation, verification; Documentation; The Human Interface - User-centered design, elements of successful interfaces; Packaging - Its influence, environmental issues, wiring and assembly issues; Power - Types of converters and distribution; Cooling - Mechanisms, types of heat transfer, and tradeoffs; Problems - types of problems: failure, remedies, integrity.