Teaching

ECE 730 Topic 30 - Advanced VLSI Devices

  • course info

    • The nano era has seen modern VLSI technologies become increasingly sensitive to structural details and fabrication techniques. While "technology scaling" continues as the strongest driver for technology advancement, it has evolved from traditional Dennard Scalling into a multi-dimensional concept that combines new materials, novel structures and different physical principles. Accordingly, this course will cover topics such as: advanced VLSI devices design; future challenges of VLSI devices; the implications for device electrical performance caused by fabrication technique, physical models for nanometer scale structures, control of electrical characteristics (threshold voltage, short channel effects, ballistic transport) in small structures; and alternative device structures for VLSI in the nano era. Expected background knowledge: solid state physics and devices (ECE630, or equivalent). Students should be familiar with the physical principles and operation of p-n junctions, MOS capacitors and long-channel MOSFETs.

ECE 445 - Digital Integrated Circuits

  • course info

    • Digital CMOS integrated circuits are enabling today's high-performance electronic systems, e.g. personal electronic devices, compute servers, as well as high-speed and portable wireless communications. Currently, several billion transistors can be integrated into a single CMOS chip, and this number is expected to continue to increase over coming years as CMOS technologies shrink and transistor performance improves. This course will cover transistor and circuit-level aspects of digital integrated circuit design. Major topics will include: (a) combinational logic gate design at the transistor level, (b) design and optimization of sequential systems, (c) arithmetic circuits and delay optimization, and (d) physical design of integrated circuits. The laboratory component of the course will use an industrial-grade CAD tool (Cadence) for schematic entry and simulation of your circuits, and for physical design, and will culminate in a group design project. By the end of the course you will have a thorough understanding of how to design digital circuits at the transistor level, where delays in digital circuits come from and how to minimize them, where power is consumed in digital circuits and how to characterize it, and how circuit designs are mapped onto integrated circuit layouts ready for fabrication. Although analog and mixed- signal circuits are not part of this course, many of the design techniques you will learn in this course are also relevant to those areas. Prerequisites: Level at least 4A Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering. From a conceptual point of view, this course naturally follows the ECE140/240/242 electronics sequence. There are also linkages to ECE 331 (for EE students) and to ECE 327 (for CompE students).

ECE 240 Electronic Circuits I

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    • This course is the second of a three-course sequence (ECE 140, ECE 240, ECE 242) on electronic circuits. In this course, we will complete the coverage of linear (both passive and active) circuits, and will start to look at circuits that contain nonlinear circuit elements such as diodes and transistors (BJT and MOSFET). Although transistors are highly nonlinear, we will also look at how to bias transistor-based circuits to achieve nearly linear gain. In addition to analyzing circuits (e.g. figuring out node voltages, and branch currents), we also will begin to design circuits (i.e. creating a circuit from scratch to achieve a given functionality and performance specification). The topics include introduction to electronic signal processing; operational amplifier circuits; diode device and circuits; MOS and bipolar amplifier biasing networks; load-line analysis; diode, MOS, and bipolar small-signal equivalent circuits; single-stage small-signal MOS and bipolar amplifiers; transistor switches. Prerequisites: ECE 106, 140, MATH 119; Level at least 2A Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering Co-requisites: ECE 205, MATH 215

ECE 140 Linear Circuits

  • course info

    • This course is the first of a three-course sequence (ECE 140, ECE 240, ECE 242) on electronic circuits. In this course, we will focus on linear elements and circuit analysis. Main topics include linear elements (voltage, current, resistance, capacitance, inductance, voltage source, current source, dependent sources), Ohm's Law, Kirchhoff's Laws, nodal analysis, mesh analysis, circuit transformations, operational amplifier circuits, time response, sinusoidal steady-state response. Preparing for, conducting, and reporting of laboratory experiments. Safety-orientation training, including WHMIS assessment, is included in this course.