John Uyemura’s text represents a successful attempt to summarize the foundations of VLSI design in a single volume. Although it was originally written for a two-quarter sequence at Georgia Tech for first-year graduate students and senior undergraduates, the breadth of the material and the writing style make it especially useful for independent study or reference by the practicing engineer.
The first chapter starts with a basic discussion of the MOS system and develops the equations that describe enhancement and depletion MOS transistors. The second chapter expands these topics to include short-channel and narrow-width effects along with scaling theory.
Chapter 3 is a detailed treatment of the DC characteristics of NMOS and CMOS inverters. Uyemura defines basic MOS voltage parameters such as input and output voltage levels, noise margin, and switching voltage. The discussion is based upon the Schichman-Hodges NMOS circuit equations and uses many examples, including NMOS inverters with resistive, enhancement, and depletion loads as well as basic CMOS inverter operation. The author includes both sample SPICE listings to demonstrate typical device simulations and BASIC programs to demonstrate typical iterative approaches for solving circuit problems.
Chapter 4 treats transient characteristics of simple NMOS and CMOS inverters. The discussion centers on rise and fall delay times and the power-delay product (PDP). A detailed explanation of contributors to MOSFET load capacitances, including gate, diffusion, and interconnect components, follows. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of scaling theory as applied to delay time calculations. Little mention is made of delay/area minimization techniques in either NMOS or CMOS. This discussion also largely ignores or dismisses body effects.
Chapter 5 treats the IC fabrication process in a concise yet thorough fashion. It gives a short overview of discrete process steps such as oxidation, diffusion, ion implantation, CVD, lithography, and etching and shows how they are combined to fabricate chips. Design rules and processing variations, topics often omitted in graduate texts, are introduced.
Chapter 6 extends the elementary concepts introduced in chapters 3 and 4 to complex logic gates. Because of the more complex circuits (NAND, NOR, XOR, etc.), the treatment is necessarily less mathematical and the analysis concentrates on transistor sizing for complex gates and implementation options. Chapter 7 covers bistable logic elements, including latches, RS flip-flops, JK flip-flops, and Schmitt triggers.
Chapters 8 and 9 treat NMOS and CMOS synchronous logic. These chapters discuss static and dynamic design approaches in the two technologies, including detailed sections on dynamic hold time, leakage currents, and charge sharing. Various NMOS and CMOS clocking methodologies such as 2-phase NMOS, ratioless NMOS, pseudo-NMOS, zipper CMOS, and NORA logic are also presented. The final chapter provides an overview of structured MOS logic.
Fundamentals of MOS digital integrated circuit design provides a good introduction to the fundamentals of MOS circuits, including many examples throughout the text. Each chapter contains a generous list of additional references as well as a problem set that reviews the material covered in the chapter. The problems appear to be well designed to enhance the student’s understanding of the material. The introductory discussion is quite complete and would serve well both as a text for a senior-level introduction to VLSI digital circuits and as a reference text for practicing engineers.
The author’s technology emphasis is close to 50/50 NMOS/CMOS, which may be the wrong balance since the majority of MOS circuits being designed today are CMOS. The author could have replaced some of the nMOS sections with a discussion of system issues such as clock generation, I/O circuits, and the design of regular arrays such as RAM, ROM, FIFOs, and multipliers.
