EE 421L Digital Integrated Circuit Design Laboratory - Lab 1

Eric Monahan

monahan@unlv.nevada.edu

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.

 

 

 

 

 

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