Lab 1 - ECE 421L
Prelab Content
Prior to this lab session, we were tasked with retreiving a CMOSedu account from Dr. Baker, and reviewing the provided material on editing html webpages. Using this material, I was able to experiment with adding or changing components on the page, leaving my first lab page in the following state:
Postlab Report
This lab consisted of us following a provided tutorial, throughout which we used Cadence Virtuoso to create and simulate a simple circuit schematic. As I completed each step of the tutorial, I took a corresponding screenshot. Those of significance can be observed along with descriptions as follows:
As I had already set up Cadence for a prior assignment in the lecture portion of the class, I skipped the first few steps showing how to do so and jumped right into creating a new library for this tutorial. I labelled it appropriately and attached the AMI 0.60u C5N tech library.
Next, I created and appropriately named a cell in that library.
The next several steps involved learning basic commands and hotkeys to:
Now that I had the completed circuit schematic with proper values, I launched the Analog Design Environment (ADE) in order to simulate. The first step for this was to ensure that we were using the proper spectre simulator.
Next, I selected and enabled a 1 second transient analysis.
Then, I selected the Vin and Vout signal labels to be plotted at runtime.
Before running the simulation and plotting, I made sure to save the state (Cellview).
Time to simulate.
With that, the simulation results had been recorded and I had successfully completed up to the first 25 steps of the tutorial as indicated.
Regarding Backups
When working on a document (or really any project on an electronic device), it is always incredibly important to have a relatively recent backup of your work saved in multiple places in case of abrupt and unexpected power loss causing corruption of the saved data, or loss of data due to failure of a drive that has degraded with time. Knowing such, I will be regularly backing up my files on both Google Drive as well as an alternate drive on my computer. These backups will include a zipped folder of the Cadence files, html files for the respective lab report webpage, as well as all of the screenshots that I take throughout the process of completing the lab.
