This book shares with readers practical design knowledge gained from the author’s 24 years of IC design experience. The author addresses issues and challenges faced commonly by IC designers, along with solutions and workarounds. Guidelines are described for tackling issues such as clock domain crossing, using lockup latch to cross clock domains during scan shift, implementation of scan chains across power domain, optimization methods to improve timing, how standard cell libraries can aid in synthesis optimization, BKM (best known method) for RTL coding, test compression, memory BIST, usage of signed Verilog for design requiring +ve and -ve calculations, state machine, code coverage and much more. Numerous figures and examples are provided to aid the reader in understanding the issues and their workarounds.

Design and optimization of integrated circuits are essential to the creation of new semiconductor chips, and physical optimizations are becoming more prominent as a result of semiconductor scaling. Modern chip design has become so complex that it is largely performed by specialized software, which is frequently updated to address advances in semiconductor technologies and increased problem complexities. A user of such software needs a high-level understanding of the underlying mathematical models and algorithms. On the other hand, a developer of such software must have a keen understanding of computer science aspects, including algorithmic performance bottlenecks and how various algorithms operate and interact. "VLSI Physical Design: From Graph Partitioning to Timing Closure" introduces and compares algorithms that are used during the physical design phase of integrated-circuit design, wherein a geometric chip layout is produced starting from an abstract circuit design. The emphasis is on essential and fundamental techniques, ranging from hypergraph partitioning and circuit placement to timing closure.

The summer school on VLSf GAD Tools and Applications was held from July 21 through August 1, 1986 at Beatenberg in the beautiful Bernese Oberland in Switzerland. The meeting was given under the auspices of IFIP WG 10. 6 VLSI, and it was sponsored by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland. Eighty-one professionals were invited to participate in the summer school, including 18 lecturers. The 81 participants came from the following countries: Australia (1), Denmark (1), Federal Republic of Germany (12), France (3), Italy (4), Norway (1), South Korea (1), Sweden (5), United Kingdom (1), United States of America (13), and Switzerland (39). Our goal in the planning for the summer school was to introduce the audience into the realities of CAD tools and their applications to VLSI design. This book contains articles by all 18 invited speakers that lectured at the summer school. The reader should realize that it was not intended to publish a textbook. However, the chapters in this book are more or less self-contained treatments of the particular subjects. Chapters 1 and 2 give a broad introduction to VLSI Design. Simulation tools and their algorithmic foundations are treated in Chapters 3 to 5 and 17. Chapters 6 to 9 provide an excellent treatment of modern layout tools. The use of CAD tools and trends in the design of 32-bit microprocessors are the topics of Chapters 10 through 16. Important aspects in VLSI testing and testing strategies are given in Chapters 18 and 19.

Based on the highly successful second edition, this extended edition of SystemVerilog for Verification: A Guide to Learning the Testbench Language Features teaches all verification features of the SystemVerilog language, providing hundreds of examples to clearly explain the concepts and basic fundamentals. It contains materials for both the full-time verification engineer and the student learning this valuable skill. In the third edition, authors Chris Spear and Greg Tumbush start with how to verify a design, and then use that context to demonstrate the language features, including the advantages and disadvantages of different styles, allowing readers to choose between alternatives. This textbook contains end-of-chapter exercises designed to enhance students’ understanding of the material. Other features of this revision include: New sections on static variables, print specifiers, and DPI from the 2009 IEEE language standard Descriptions of UVM features such as factories, the test registry, and the configuration database Expanded code samples and explanations Numerous samples that have been tested on the major SystemVerilog simulators SystemVerilog for Verification: A Guide to Learning the Testbench Language Features, Third Edition is suitable for use in a one-semester SystemVerilog course on SystemVerilog at the undergraduate or graduate level. Many of the improvements to this new edition were compiled through feedback provided from hundreds of readers.

How should I prepare for a Digital VLSI Verification Interview? What all topics do I need to know before I turn up for an interview? What all concepts do I need to brush up? What all resources do I have at my disposal for preparation? What does an Interviewer expect in an Interview? These are few questions almost all individuals ponder upon before an interview. If you have these questions in your mind, your search ends here as keeping these questions in their minds, authors have written this book that will act as a golden reference for candidates preparing for Digital VLSI Verification Interviews. Aim of this book is to enable the readers practice and grasp important concepts that are applicable to Digital VLSI Verification domain (and Interviews) through Question and Answer approach. To achieve this aim, authors have not restricted themselves just to the answer. While answering the questions in this book, authors have taken utmost care to explain underlying fundamentals and concepts. This book consists of 500+ questions covering wide range of topics that test fundamental concepts through problem statements (a common interview practice which the authors have seen over last several years). These questions and problem statements are spread across nine chapters and each chapter consists of questions to help readers brush-up, test, and hone fundamental concepts that form basis of Digital VLSI Verification. The scope of this book however, goes beyond technical concepts. Behavioral skills also form a critical part of working culture of any company. Hence, this book consists of a section that lists down behavioral interview questions as well. Topics covered in this book:1. Digital Logic Design (Number Systems, Gates, Combinational, Sequential Circuits, State Machines, and other Design problems)2. Computer Architecture (Processor Architecture, Caches, Memory Systems)3. Programming (Basics, OOP, UNIX/Linux, C/C++, Perl)4. Hardware Description Languages (Verilog, SystemVerilog)5. Fundamentals of Verification (Verification Basics, Strategies, and Thinking problems)6. Verification Methodologies (UVM, Formal, Power, Clocking, Coverage, Assertions)7. Version Control Systems (CVS, GIT, SVN)8. Logical Reasoning/Puzzles (Related to Digital Logic, General Reasoning, Lateral Thinking)9. Non Technical and Behavioral Questions (Most commonly asked)In addition to technical and behavioral part, this book touches upon a typical interview process and gives a glimpse of latest interview trends. It also lists some general tips and Best-Known-Methods to enable the readers follow correct preparation approach from day-1 of their preparations. Knowing what an Interviewer looks for in an interviewee is always an icing on the cake as it helps a person prepare accordingly. Hence, authors of this book spoke to few leaders in the semiconductor industry and asked their personal views on "What do they look for while Interviewing candidates and how do they usually arrive at a decision if a candidate should be hired?". These leaders have been working in the industry from many-many years now and they have interviewed lots of candidates over past several years. Hear directly from these leaders as to what they look for in candidates before hiring them. Enjoy reading this book. Authors are open to your feedback. Please do provide your valuable comments, ratings, and reviews.

This book provides some recent advances in design nanometer VLSI chips. The selected topics try to present some open problems and challenges with important topics ranging from design tools, new post-silicon devices, GPU-based parallel computing, emerging 3D integration, and antenna design. The book consists of two parts, with chapters such as: VLSI design for multi-sensor smart systems on a chip, Three-dimensional integrated circuits design for thousand-core processors, Parallel symbolic analysis of large analog circuits on GPU platforms, Algorithms for CAD tools VLSI design, A multilevel memetic algorithm for large SAT-encoded problems, etc.

This book provides readers with an up-to-date account of the use of machine learning frameworks, methodologies, algorithms and techniques in the context of computer-aided design (CAD) for very-large-scale integrated circuits (VLSI). Coverage includes the various machine learning methods used in lithography, physical design, yield prediction, post-silicon performance analysis, reliability and failure analysis, power and thermal analysis, analog design, logic synthesis, verification, and neuromorphic design. Provides up-to-date information on machine learning in VLSI CAD for device modeling, layout verifications, yield prediction, post-silicon validation, and reliability; Discusses the use of machine learning techniques in the context of analog and digital synthesis; Demonstrates how to formulate VLSI CAD objectives as machine learning problems and provides a comprehensive treatment of their efficient solutions; Discusses the tradeoff between the cost of collecting data and prediction accuracy and provides a methodology for using prior data to reduce cost of data collection in the design, testing and validation of both analog and digital VLSI designs. From the Foreword As the semiconductor industry embraces the rising swell of cognitive systems and edge intelligence, this book could serve as a harbinger and example of the osmosis that will exist between our cognitive structures and methods, on the one hand, and the hardware architectures and technologies that will support them, on the other....As we transition from the computing era to the cognitive one, it behooves us to remember the success story of VLSI CAD and to earnestly seek the help of the invisible hand so that our future cognitive systems are used to design more powerful cognitive systems. This book is very much aligned with this on-going transition from computing to cognition, and it is with deep pleasure that I recommend it to all those who are actively engaged in this exciting transformation. Dr. Ruchir Puri, IBM Fellow, IBM Watson CTO & Chief Architect, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center