EE 421L Digital Integrated Circuit Design
Laboratory - Lab 1
Eric
Monahan
9/7/16
Laboratory introduction, generating/posting
html lab reports, installing and using Cadence
Pre-lab work
o
The lab reports will be drafted using html and placed on CMOSedu.
o
Prior to the first day of lab, but no earlier than one week before
the lab starts, get a CMOSedu account, using your
UNLV email address, from Dr. Baker, rjacobbaker@gmail.com
o
Review the material for covering editing webpages
PostLab
Your lab report will consist of:
o 1. Simply showing some
of the images in this tutorial (that you generated) with some simple coherent
narrative.
o 2) discussing how
you will do regular backups while working on the future labs by zipping up your
work and emailing it to yourself
or uploading to dropbox,
google drive, etc. with file names including the date (include at least two
images to support your discussion).
Prelab
A CMOSedu account was obtained from Dr.
Baker as instructed.
The material for editing webpages was reviewed and followed
as evidenced by the creation of this laboratory report. The material is found
at the following link: Edit Webpage
Experiment
o This first lab will go through the first part
of Tutorial 1.
o Go through Tutorial 1 up to the following image
(the 25th image in the tutorial displayed below).
The
tutorial begins with installing MobaXterm and
downloading and extracting the contents of the NCSU Cadence Design Kit (CDK) from
the links provided in the Tutorial 1 Instructions. The MobaXterm
window is displayed below to the left. Next, several lines were added to the .bashrc file, as displayed in the image to the right below.
The
next steps involved creating a CMOSedu directory as
verified in the image to the left below, importing and copying the contents of
the CDK file to CMOSedu and renaming several files to
include a period, thus making the files hidden. After this step, several
definitions were added to the cds.lib
file, as displayed in the image below to the right. Also, the Design Rule Check
files were added to into the CDK files to enable Cadence to properly DRC,
Extract and LVS layouts.
Next,
Cadence was launched and a Tutorial 1 Library and a new file titled R_div were created. Instructions were followed to create a
basic voltage divider using two 10kΩ resistors obtained via the Component
Browser and the NCSU_Analog_Parts library. The
emphasis on this portion of the tutorial was gaining familiarity with the
process and commands necessary to create circuit schematics. The image
displayed to the left below shows the creation of the Tutorial 1 library and
the image to the right shows the R_div schematic
being created. A second file titled R_div2 was created to demonstrate these
steps since the R_div file was finished prior to
collecting the images for this report.
After
performing a "Check and Save" of the completed schematic, the next
step involved simulating the voltage divider using the Analog
Design
Environment (ADE). Intermediary steps in this portion of the tutorial included
setting the default simulator to Spectre and saving
the Session state to avoid repeating simulation steps such as selecting the
type of simulation to be performed. The figure displayed to the left below
shows the Check and Save results. The figure displayed
to the right displays the ADE window showing the type of simulation being
performed and the signals selected for plotting.
The
completed voltage divider schematic is displayed below to the left. The ADE
plot of the voltage input and output signals is displayed
below to the right. Theoretically calculated values displayed below validate
the values displayed on the simulation plot.
This completed the steps required for the
experiment as outlined in the laboratory instructions.
Backing Up Lab Report
Files
The
lab report files typically created and edited on a personal laptop will be
routinely backed up after saving as a zip file via both personal email and
loading onto Google Drive. The image below displays the Google Drive folder
used for the backup. These files are also downloaded onto a personal desktop to
allow editing on a larger screen.
Conclusion
Laboratory
Experiment 1 provided an introductory review of creating and editing html lab
reports, accessing Cadence via a remote desktop and creating, editing and
simulating basic circuits using Cadence. Lastly, the tutorial emphasized the
importance of backing up lab report files to avoid losing hours of valuable
work.
Return to
Monahan Lab Report Directory
Return
to EE 421L Fall 2016 Student Directory