University of California –Riverside

Department of Electrical Engineering

Spring 2008

EE213: Computer-Aided Electronic Circuit Simulation

 

 

Instructor: Dr. Sheldon Tan

Office: ENGII 424

 

Email: stan@ee.ucr.edu

 

Office Hours: 3:30pm – 4:30pm  by appointment.

 

Lecture:      PHY 2111,   Thursday 6:10pm – 9:00pm

 

Course Background and Description:

Circuit simulation techniques are fundamental to the design and verification of today’s electronic systems.  The field of circuit simulation has seen exciting development ever since the advent of integrated circuits. Modern integrated circuits continually challenge circuit simulation algorithms and implementations with the various verification problems they pose.  As VLSI technology has advanced to the nano-scale regime, how to efficiently simulate all the important new physic effects coming shrinking devices is crucial to the design and verification of future VLSI systems.

 

This course presents the theoretical and practical aspects of the building a circuit simulator, such as SPICE. It introduces numerical algorithms and computer-aided techniques for the simulation of electronic circuits. Students will learn the state of the art and future challenges in simulating and analyzing electronic circuits. The course will provide students the knowledge and foundations for future research into design and design automation of future VLSI systems in general, and advanced simulation and modeling techniques for nanometer VLSI  designs in particular. We will balance the classic simulation algorithms with new model order reduction techniques for interconnect circuits.  Theoretical and practical aspects of important analyses techniques: circuit formulation methods, large-signal nonlinear DC, small-signal AC and moment matching, transient, inductive modeling and reduction techniques. Recent advances in timing, thermal, and RF circuit analysis.

 

Who can take the course?

 

Both EE and CS undergraduate and graduate students are welcome as circuit simulation and modeling are important knowledge for efficiently design and verification of today’s VLSI and nanometer systems and future bio-chips. The course covers mathematics, circuit theory, graph theory, physics, device modeling, electrical engineering and software development.

Course Topics

 

  1. Formulation of Circuit Equations: Nodal Analysis, Modified Nodal Analysis (MNA), and Sparse Tableau and Reduced Tableau Approach. (1 week)
  2. Solution of linear equations: Gaussian Elimination, LU decomposition, and sparse matrix techniques, and Krylov iterative methods. (2 weeks)
  3. DC analysis: nonlinear DC analysis and convergence issues (1 week)
  4. Small-signal  transient analysis for linear differential equations (1 week)
  5. Small-signal transient analysis for nonlinear differential equations (1 weeks)
  6. Moment matching concepts and Krylov Subspace (1 week)
  7. Model order reduction and Advanced MOR (terminal reduction and TBR based MOR methods) (1 week)
  8. Inductive modeling and model order reduction for inductively coupled interconnect circuits (1 week)
  9. Thermal and statistical analysis for VLSI circuits (1 week)
  10. Radio-Frequency and Millimeter  Wave (MW) circuit analysis and modeling (1 weeks, option)

 

 

 

Announcements:

 

q  The instruction will begin on April 3, 2007.

q  June 9-13 (Final week). But I will be in DAC08 this year. So we will finalize projects in the last week.

 

 

 

Homework: (with potential due days)

 

Homework 1

 

Homework 2

 

Homework 3

 

Homework 4

 

 

·        Lecture notes are in UCR blackboard

 

·        Course Syllabus

 

·        Course Calendar

 

·        Course Projects