C TUTORIAL: Mixed Signal IC Design and Test: Challenges, Solutions, and Industry Practice

Date: Monday 12 March, 2012
Time: 0930 - 1800
Location / Room: Konferenz 3

Moderators:
Gordon Roberts, McGill U, CA

Speakers:
Gordon Roberts, McGill U, CA

This tutorial will describe the challenges and practices of analog/mixed-signal (MS) design and test at a level that is suited to the non-expert. In much the same way that a computer program is written to implement a specific signal-processing algorithm, e.g., remove noise from a camera image, the goal of any analog/mixed-signal circuit design is to do a similar operation using a specialized transistor implementation. In order to appreciate the details of analog/MS design, this tutorial will begin with a review of the MOS transistor and how its voltage biasing and aspect ratio control its performance attributes. These insights will serve as the guide to the design of several basic circuits such as current sources and amplifiers. During the manufacturing, such circuits experience large variations in behavior. To solve these problems, unit-ratio component design together with feedback methods are used.

While negative feedback has largely been responsible for the success of analog/MS circuits, it is also the reason that these circuits are so difficult to test. As analog/MS circuits today achieve incredibly high levels of performance, it does so by operating at the limits of what component matching and negative feedback can provide. This, in turn, makes testing these circuits extremely time consuming, i.e., costly, as the test information lies with very small signals buried in noise. This tutorial will describe both production test techniques and several DFT approaches used in practice today; as well we shall look ahead into possible DFT approaches being discussed today in various research circles.

Target audience: The intended audience is someone with an electrical engineering background but who was never really strong with the subject-matter related to analog electronics.

Tutorial objectives: Attendees will learn how to design analog building blocks at the transistor level, assemble them into system sub-blocks such as filters, data converters and PLLs and learn how such circuits are tested in a production environment using ATE and DFT techniques. The discussion will be focused more on one’s intuition rather than on elaborate mathematical models of circuit behavior.

Duration: Full day (6h)

SPEAKERS' BIOGRAPHIES

Gordon W. Roberts is a full professor at McGill U in Montreal and holds the James McGill Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has co-written six textbooks related to analog IC design and mixed-signal test. Dr. Roberts has supervised over 45 graduate students at the Masters and PhD level. His research interest includes analog IC design methods, analog/mixed-signal production test techniques, design-for-test and built-in self-test techniques for analog and high-speed digital circuits. Dr. Roberts is named on 10 patents, and has received numerous department, faculty and university awards for teaching electronics and test to undergraduates. He has received several IEEE awards for his work on mixed-signal testing. Most notably, he has been awarded the 1992, 1993 and 2000 best or honorable mention papers at the International Test Conference. Several of works are published in the 2004 most significant papers published in the 35 years of ITC. Dr. Roberts is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Time	ID	Presentation Title Authors
1800		Break