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IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Week 16

• (12-13) Final Exam 12:30-3:30pm, 277 Cory.  Note that the exam will start at 12:30pm sharp; don't forget to bring a calculator.
• (12-12) All of the discussion sessions today will instead be office hours (held in the discussion room).  In addition, John will hold office hours in the lab from 11am-12pm.
• Elad will hold a final review session this Thurs. from 6-7pm in the 550 Cory conference room.
• (12-9) If you have not already sent in an electronic copy of your final project report (including the SPICE decks and DRC/LVS logs) to ee141-project@bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu, please do so as soon as possible.
• To help everyone prepare for the final exam, Elad will hold extra office hours this week:
  • Wed.  9:30-10:30am
  • Thurs. 3:30-5pm
• (12-7) If you're having trouble getting power.sp to complete successfully, please see the tips below.
  • Type "quota" to check how much of your disk quota you're currently using.   Running power.sp on a fully extracted netlist can generate very large files, so the simulation may be failing simply because you are running out of space. 
    • If this is the case, try running the simulation in the /tmp directory.  (/tmp is the local hard disk of whatever machine you are logged on to, and does not have any quota associated with it.  Note however that files on the local disk are not backed up.)
  • If you are including wire resistance in your extraction, you should do a back-of-the-envelope calculation to check if including this resistance is actually necessary.  Unless you've done something very wrong, it is unlikely that wire resistance will have a significant impact on your design, so you can try extracting only capacitance and simulating that version of the netlist.

Week 15

• To help you prepare for the final, Homework 9 (which is optional) has been posted.
• (12-3) Project Update:
  • When using power.sp, please be sure to initialize the SRAM cells so that the outputs of final buffers actually transition once every other cycle.  If you don't do this, you will be missing the power consumed by driving the 20fF load capacitors at the output.
  • The teaching staff will hold several additional office hours this week for last minute project issues (or questions related to the final):
    • Thurs., 11am-12pm, John (in lab).  Elad will be out of town on Thurs., so this office hour is instead of Elad's normally scheduled one.
    • Thurs., 3:30-5pm, Lingkai (in lab)
    • Fri., 10-11am, Abhinav (in lab)
• As a point of reference, we have posted a project poster from Fall 2007 here. 
• Elad will hold extra office hours on Tuesday from 5:15-6:15pm.
• Elad's office hours on Tuesday have been extended to 10:30am - 12pm.
• John will hold office hours instead of discussion session on Monday.

Week 14

• Due to an error in the video recording, Tues. 11-18's lecture is unfortunately unavailable.  The main topic of that lecture was domino logic (Lecture Notes #21).  As the notes are very similar to last year's, if you were unable to attend lecture (or would like a refresher) you can watch last year's lecture here:  wmv download.
• Elad will hold extra office hours on Wed. Nov. 26th from 10-11am.
• The power measurement deck has been posted at /home/ff/ee141/fall08/project/power_meas/power.sp
• The project phase 3 report template has been posted.

Week 13

• Homework 8 is due on Tuesday, 11/25. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge).

Week 12

• Project 3 is due on Monday, 12/8.
• (11-13) Project Update:
  • The original flow we posted for generating a spice netlist from an Assura extraction view has issues with angle brackets ("<" or ">") and netlisting.  To fix this issue, you can generate a SPICE netlist with the extractor directly by following the instructions listed here.
• Due to Veteran's Day, there will be no lecture on Tuesday.
  • Elad's Tues. office hours will also be moved to Wed. 9-10am.
• For this week, Abhinav's Mon. office hours this have been moved to Wed. from 12-2pm in the Moore room.

Week 11

• Project 2 is due on Friday, 11/14. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge).
• For any last-minute midterm questions, Elad's office hours this Thurs. have been extended to 10:30am-12:30pm.
• Midterm 2 Thurs. Nov. 6th 6:30-8:00pm, 277 Cory
  • Note that the exam starts at 6:30pm sharp.
  • Don't forget to bring your calculator!

Week 10

• Project Info (10-29):
  • When you extract your layout, the capacitors the extraction tool adds to the netlist are from the wires only.  The capacitance from the transistors is automatically included in the transistor models. (Note that if capacitance wasn't included in the transistor model, none of the delay simulations we've done so far based only on schematics would have worked.)  So, when you are calculating the total loading on the wordline, you need to be sure to add the capacitance from the gates of the access transistors.
• Abhinav will hold additional office hours this week on Wed. from 2-4pm in 353 Cory.  Since Elad will be out of town, he will also hold office hours on Thurs. from 11am-12pm (also in 353 Cory).
• The midterm review session will be held on Tuesday Nov. 4th from 6:30-7:30pm in the Hogan room (Cory 521).
• From now until the end of the semester, John will hold additional office hours in the lab (353 Cory) from 12pm-1pm on Tuesdays.
• There was a typo in the originally posted project handout; you should copy the standard cells from ~ee141/fall08/project (not from ~ee141/project).

Week 9

• Project 1 is due on Thursday, 10/30. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge).
• The audio from the webcast of the lecture from Thurs.10-16 cuts out ~18 minutes into the video.  There is unfortunately nothing we can do to fix the video; however, audio-only versions of the lectures (through the Berkeley webcast system) can be found here. (The start times for the two streams aren't identical, but you should be able to "synch" them relatively easily by hand.)
• For this week only, Abhinav's discussion session (normally held on Fridays) has been rescheduled to Monday Oct. 27th from 12-1pm in 293 Cory.

Week 8

• Homework 7 is due on Thursday, 10/23. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge).
• Homework #6 Clarifications:
  • (10-13-08) There was a typo in the originally posted problem 3 - the C_g and C_d values should be 2fF/um (not 2fF/um²).  A corrected version of the homework has been posted.
  • (10-14-08) For problem 3, you can ignore DIBL (i.e., you can assume that η=0).
• For this week only, Abhinav's office hours have been moved to Wed. from 11am-12pm.

Week 7

• Homework 6 is due on Thursday, 10/16. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge).
• (10-7-08): There was a numerical error in the solution for problem 3)c) of Homework #4 - a corrected solution has been posted.
• Midterm 1 Tues. Oct. 7th 6:30-8:00pm, 105 Northgate. 
  • Note that the exam will start at 6:30pm sharp.
• The midterm review session will be held on Monday Oct. 6th from 11am-12pm in Kroeber 155.
• Elad will hold extra office hours from 10-10:45am on Monday.
• Abhinav will extend his Monday office hours to 12-2pm in the Moore room.

Week 6

• Since Elad is out of town, Lingkai will hold office hours on Thurs. from 11am-12pm in 400A Cory Hall.
• John's discussion session this week has been moved to Tues. 9-10am.  The room where the discussion will be held will posted on the newsgroup.
• Instead of the normally scheduled Thursday time slot, Lecture #11 will be given from 3-4:30pm in 521 Cory (Hogan Room) on Friday, Oct. 3rd.
• For this week only, Elad's office hours on Tuesday have been moved to 10am-11am.  Also, Elad's Thursday office hours will be moved to Friday, Oct. 3rd from 4:30-5:30pm.

Week 5

• Homework 5 is due on Thursday, 10/2. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge).
• For this week only, Elad's office hours on Tuesday have been cancelled.  Instead, John will hold office hours from 10:30-11:30am on Tuesday in the Moore room.  Note that John will also hold his regularly scheduled office hours (Wed. 3-4pm) in 353 Cory.
• Homework #4 Clarifications (9-19-08):
  • There was a typo in problem 3 - instead of Rp=Rn=1 kohm/square, please use Rp = 20 kohm/square and Rn = 10 kohm/square.

Week 4

• Homework 4 is due on Thursday, 9/25. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge).
• Homework #3 Clarifications (9-17-08):
  • Throughout problem 2, you should assume that Vdd = 1.2V.
  • Please turn in all of your SPICE decks for problem 2.
  • There was a typo in the problem 2)d) writeup - the units for Cj should be fF/um (not fF/um²).
• Abhinav's office hours have been extended to 12:30-2:00pm on Mondays, and will be held in the Moore Room located in the Courtyard of Cory Hall on the 2nd floor.
  • To get to the room, go through the Student Lounge outside and into the courtyard, or use the door next to the HKN office to enter the courtyard.

Week 3

• Homework 3 is due on Thursday, 9/18. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge).
• Homework #2 Clarification (9-7-08):
  • There was a typo in the VTC of problem 1)a) - the gain in the "stable" region should be 1.  A corrected version of the homework has been posted.
• Lab Anouncement (9-6-08):
  • Since we won't have covered layout yet in lecture, the labs on Monday (9-8) and Tuesday (9-9) will not be held this week .  Instead, they will start next week.  In other words, Software Lab #2 will be held in lab on Friday (9-12), Monday (9-15), and Tuesday (9-16).

Week 2

• Homework 2 is due on Thursday, 9/11. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge).
• Elad's office hours this Thurs. only have been moved to 10:30am - 11:30am.
• Discussions start this Friday.
• If you didn't attend lecture #1, please come to Elad's office hours on Tues. to pick up an instructional account form.

Week 1

• Homework 1 is due on Thursday, 9/4. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge).
• No labs, no discussion sessions in week 1.
• Assignment to Lab sessions finalized in 2nd week of classes.