Lab 1 – Laboratory Intro, Installing and Using Cadence

EE 421L Digital IC Design

Lab Date: 8/28/19 Due: 9/04/19

By David Santiago – Email: santid4@unlv.nevada.edu

Last Edited on 9/03/19 at 1:08pm using Word

  

Lab description:

In this lab, we will be learning how to install Cadence and making a simple schematic and simulating it in Virtuoso.

 

To be brief, we will be following how to install Cadence using this guideline provided by Dr. Baker.

To summarize what I have done to install Cadence:

-      Request an account from Dr. Greg (assuming you are a UNLV Student) and retrieve your username and password (usually given by email).

-      Download MobaXterm

o   You can download the latest version here

-      After launching MobaXterm, start new local terminal and login to the ssh client.

-      Download the NCSU-CDK-1.6.0.beta.tar file from their website (the site wanted my email address, so I gave it to them and got a email link).

-      Followed the rest of the instructions from Dr. Baker’s Guideline.

 

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Experiment 1: Layout and simulation of a resistive voltage divider

 

For this experiment, we will be following the Cadence Design Tutorials from CMOSedu.com

 

Most of the Cadence setup has been done if you followed the guideline. The part that will need to be added is deleting divaDRC.rul, divaEXT.rul, and divaLVS.rul and following the tutorial from there on.

 

After the initial setup and running Virtuoso, lets build our circuit.

Favorite bindkeys are:

-      Key i (to create an electrical component, or instance)

-      Key w (to create a wire)

-      Key f (to find where your circuit is, aka “Fit” the circuit to the window)

-      Key q (so that we can change values of resistors)

-      Key l “Lowercase L” (So that we can label our circuit and make the grader happy ^-^)

-      Key u (to undo an error, wont work if you already saved it)

 

After reading how to setup a tutorial library, attaching the AMI (On Semiconductor) 0.6μ C5N process, defining the library (using DEFINE Tutorial_1 $HOME/CMOSedu/Tutorial_1) in the cds.lib file, and creating a new schematic (with parts already in place), this is the result:

 

 

Clicking “Check and Save” at the top left corner of the window and we get this:

 

 

To figure out what’s going on, we can look at a helpful window, the Command Interpreter Window (CIW):

 

As we can see, this window will be very handy in figuring out what problems we need to fix.

After fixing the errors and doing “Check and Save” again:

 

 

Following the tutorial, launching the Virtuoso Analog Design Environment L, performing a transient simulation of 1 second, and plotting Vin and Vout:

 

 

 

 

 

Looking at the Waveforms, and doing a simple hand calculation for Vout, we can say that the circuit has been successfully simulated.

 

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Backing up work:

The way I will be backing up my work will be simple:

-      I will create an EE421L folder, with 2 sections: The online part (which will contain all the .html files, pictures, and revised lab reports that I will post onto my CMOSedu lab page) and an offline part (which will contain any messy work, snips, or anything I do in general to help write up the reports.

 

 

 

 

          (Lab report labeled as “lab1.htm”)

 

All of the files shown will be saved onto my personal laptop and into a USB. Every time a lab report is submitted, I go into my “EE421Online” folder, and drag the lab folder into the ftp window that will upload the folder onto my CMOSedu lab page.

 

 

 

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