CE315 labs

I have never worked with ElectricVLSI before this lab but I can see why we'll be using it for this class. Learning new software always takes some time to get used to and Electric was no different. Thanks to "Tutorial 1: Introduction to ElectricVLSI" however, I managed to learn the different settings required for our class and to have Electric produce waveforms in LTSpice. I will admit it's been awhile since I've worked in LTSpice, but as I progressed through the tutorial and even during the first lab, some of the old knowledge started coming back, albeit slowly.

    Task 1 required some fimiliarty with ElectricVLSI so the first step was to complete tutorial 1 at the beginning. It took some time to get used to the controls of placing and wiring different objects in Electric but eventually I got the hang of it. Once tutorial 1 was completed, the rest of task 1 was fairly easy since all I had to do was copy a library and simulate a pre-established schematic.
    Task 2 is where I actually created a schematic and icon for an "R-2R Ladder" DAC circuit. In the beginning I had forgotten to export the pins on the "off page" ports which showed when my icon didn't have any ports to connect to; this only slowed me down momentarily after having another student review my work and point out this mistake. After refining the icon, I successfully replaced the 10-bit ideal DAC from the previous task's schematic with the new created one. No errors from F5-DRC scans and the LTSpice was created.
    Task 3 was also easy to execute in terms of hand calculations, Electric, and in LTSpice. For the hand calculations I had to dig into previous classes in order to remember how to solve for the time delay. Everything in electric and LTSpice was laid out and thus simple to execute. Getting the percise position on the LTSpice graph was a bit tough but I managed to get close enough to the values I got in my hand calculated time delay.

The actual work of Task 1 wasn't that hard since all I was doing was simulating a pre-established design. The results of this can be seen below in Figure 1. "ENGR333" is highlighted in Electric because it was one of the requirements for having my own library to pull these designs from in future tasks.

Figure 1. Results of Task 1

Below in Figure 2 are the results from my icon "2_2R_Ladder", combined with the ideal ADC design from Task 2. Both resulted in an LTSpice plot similar to Task 1's with the pre-made designs.

Figure 2. Results of Task 2

The figure with the two circuits solved with Thevenin's Equivelant in the actual lab assignment was a great starting point for the hand calculations! Below in Figure 3 is my version plus the answer I got from it. 70 [nano-seconds] at 1.25V was my final answer and I managed to recreate it in LTSpice with Electric.

Figure 3. Hand Calculations of Task 3's Circuit

After the hand calculations were solved for, I matched these results in LTSpice which can be seen in Figure 4. The highlighted value is supposed to be positive 70 but my probes were backwards. Still, with the probe around 1.25V, I managed to correctly get the 70ns we were looking for.

Figure 4. Results of Task 3

"Tutorial 1: Intro. to ElectricVLSI" took me some time to get the hang of but was informative and with time, I managed to complete it. After the tutorial, working in ElectricVLSI felt less daunting. I also switched computers from working primarily on my laptop to working on a school computer so I also had to reinforce my knowledge about Electric's LTSpice settings since everything reset. For the most part creating the various schematics wasn't too hard with only some minor problems that were resolved with time or help from another student. Task 3 was the most problematic, because without the hand calculations I wouldn't of understood the context of this task. It was only after I solved for both the simulation and the calculations did things start connecting to me. Overall I got more comfortable with the new ELectricVLSI software and reinforced my old LTSpice knowledge but I know there's still more I need to remember and learn. I look forward to seeing what else ElectricVLSI and LTSpice can do together.