Week 17

• (12-15) Richie's office hours today will actually be held in 353 Cory (and not 400 Cory as originally announced).
• (12-12) The office hours schedule for this week is as follows:
  • Milos: Mon. 2:30-4pm, 353 Cory
  • Elad: Tues. 11am-12pm, 519 Cory
  • Richie: Tues. 1-2pm, 400 Cory

Week 16

• The final exam will be held on Tues. Dec. 15th from 5-8pm (sharp) in 100 Wheeler.
• Milos will hold a discussion session this Fri. (Dec. 11th) to review last year's final.  Yue will also hold a discussion session on Mon. (Dec. 14th) from 10:30am-11:30am.
• Elad will hold a final review session on Mon. Dec. 14th from 5-6pm in 241 Cory.
• (12-8) One way to minimize confusion with the naming of the nodes in the layout version of the SRAM is to name the cell instances when you instantiate them.  If you do not use these names, then not only is it possible for the wordlines to get "scrambled", but the names the extractor uses for each SRAM cell may not match with what you expect based on the schematic.
  • Another robust way of de-convolving the naming between the layout and the schematic is to ask LVS to generate a correspondence file.  This file tells you which nets in the schematic matched with which nets in the layout.  So, if you know what nets you're looking for in the schematic, you can just search the correspondence file for those nets and find their name in the layout.
• (12-7) - Project Announcement Since we want to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to see the project through to completion (and much of the learning happens by doing this), we will give additional credit to all groups who submit a more complete or extended project by 9am Thurs. Dec. 10th.  For obvious reasons, this additional credit will be less than the credit given to groups who completed the same work by the original deadline.  In other words, to receive as much credit as you can, you should turn in the full extent of the work you've done so far tonight.  
• (12-7) In addition to providing a summary of the power, performance, and area specs achieved by everyone's project, in the bonus lecture tomorrow we will cover common mistakes/issues encountered in the project and how to solve them.  We highly encourage everyone to attend.

Week 15

• (12-3) There will be no discussion session tomorrow (12-4) or Monday (12-7).
• (12-3) The GSI's will hold the following office hours this week and the beginning of next:
  • Fri. 9-10am (Milos)
  • Fri. 2-3pm (Yue)
  • Mon. 9-10am (Milos)
  • Mon. 10-11am (Richie)
• (12-1) As announced in class today, attendance at this Thurs. lecture is mandatory in order to facilitate filling out the HKN course survey forms.  We will also begin lecture 5 minutes early (i.e., at 11:05am) in order to ensure that we have enough time to cover the material as well as fill out the forms.

Week 14

• Homework 9 (which is optional) has been posted.
• As a point of reference, we have posted an example project poster from Fall 2007 here.
• (11-25) If you change the power supply of your SRAM, the margin specifications should all be scaled with this supply voltage.  In other words, if V_DD = 0.6V, the voltage rise during a read must be no greater than 75mV.  This constraint is in reality somewhat optimistic since in reality the absolute read voltage margin (measured with the butterfly plot) would actually need to remain constant.  So, as indicated by the report template, be sure to check your voltage margins and compare them to the original design as well.
• Due to the project, Richie and Yue's office hours have been shifted next week.  Richie will hold his office hours from 2-3pm on Mon. Nov. 30th, and Yue will hold his office hours from 5-6pm on Tues. Dec. 1st (both in 353 Cory).
• (11-23) The power and functionality check SPICE deck is no available on the instructional machines in the ~ee141/fall09/project/ directory.

Week 13

• (11-19) The precharge and output buffer cells are now available on the instructional machines in the ~ee141/fall09/project/ directory.
• Due to Thanksgiving, Richie's office hours for next week have been shifted to Mon. Nov. 23rd from 2-3pm in 353 Cory Hall.
• (11-18) There was a minor typo in the originally posted version of HW#8; the end of problem 2)a) should read "(rising edge of Out)" and not "(falling edge of Out)".  A corrected version of the homework has been posted.
• Homework 8 is due on Tuesday, 11/24. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge)

Week 12

• Since Elad is out of town this week, Yue will hold office hours on Tues. from 4-5pm in 353 Cory, and Milos will hold office hours on Thurs. from 2-3pm, also in 353 Cory.
• (11-9) Starting from this week, Richie's office hours have been moved to 353 Cory.
  • Because of the holiday, for this week only Richie's office hours have been moved to Thurs. 1:30-2:30pm.
  • (In the future Richie's office hours will still be held on Wed. from 4-5pm.)

Week 11

• (11-5) Elad will hold extra office hours today from 3-4pm.
• (11-3) Starting this Thurs. (11-5), our classroom has been moved to 3111 Etcheverry.
• (11-2) This Tuesday's lecture (11-3) will be taped ahead from 9:30am to 11am in 521 Cory (the Hogan Room).
• Since Elad will be out of the office on Tues. 11-3, Yue will hold office hours on Tues. from 4-5pm in 353 Cory.
• Midterm #2 will be held in 2060 Valley LSB from 6:30-8:00pm (sharp) on Thurs., Nov. 5th.
• Elad will hold a midterm review session on Wed. Nov. 4th from 6:00-7:00pm in 247 Cory.

Week 10

• (10-29) Starting next week, Yue's office hours will be held in 353 Cory.
• (10-28) The project phase 1 handout and the template had some conflicting instructions in terms of the report - please be sure to follow the instructions provided in the template.  We apologize for the confusion.
• In order to plot the butterfly curves in Waveview you can use the following procedure:
  • Go to File, then click on "Export Waveform Data"
  • Choose the name for your output file.  For example, "rnm.txt"
  • Make sure the "Text Table" option is checked.
  • Click OK.
  • Now you can import the .txt file into MS Excel or Matlab.

Week 9

• (10-20) Clarifications on HW#7 problem #2 (a revised version has been posted):
  • You should assume that the M2 wire minimum width is 0.14um.
  • You should assume that the M2 wire's resistance/square is 0.075ohm/sq.
  • You should assume that C_D =  1.6fF/um.
  • For problem #3, please use a minimum channel length of 100nm for the transistors.
• If you have not yet found a project partner, please email ee141@cory so that the teaching staff can help to pair you up with someone.
• Starting this week, Milos' office hours have been moved to Mondays from 2:30-4pm in 353 Cory.

Week 8

• Homework 7 is due on Thursday, 10/22. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge)
• (10-14) Since Elad will be out of town, Richie will hold office hours on Thurs. from 2-3pm in 353 Cory.
• (10-13) For today only, Elad's office hours have been shifted/extended.  They will be held from 2-3pm, and then for another 30 mins from 4-4:30pm.
• Thurs. Oct. 15th's lecture will be taped ahead on Wed., Oct. 14th in 540A Cory from 10:30am-12pm.

Week 7

• Homework 6 is due on Thursday, 10/15. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge)

Week 6

• (10-1) Elad will hold a midterm review session on Mon. Oct. 5th at 6pm in 241 Cory.
• Clarification: all labs are due one week after they are held, including lab #4. 
  • Milos will be in the lab on Monday at 3pm to collect the lab reports.
• Yue and Richie's office hours next week have been moved in order to answer questions before the midterm.  They will be:
  • Yue: Monday, Oct. 5th, 3-4pm in 353 Cory
  • Richie: Tuesday, Oct. 6th, 1-2pm in 353 Cory
• Midterm #1 will be held in 105 North Gate from 6:30-8:00pm (sharp) on Tues., Oct. 6th.
• For copies of the previous years' exams (with solutions), please look at the bottom of the Course Information section of the website.
• (9-29) Since Elad will be out of town, Yue will hold extra office hours from 4-5pm on Tues. 9-29 in 353 Cory.

Week 5

• Homework 5 is due on Thursday, 10/1. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge)
• (9-23) Since Elad will be out of town, Milos will hold extra office hours from 2-3pm on Thurs. 9-24 in 571 Cory.
• (9-21) There was a typo in problem #3 of the originally posted version of HW#4.  A corrected version has been posted; the text stating that "γ=1" should be removed (γ should be 0.8, as specified earlier in the problem).

Week 4

• Homework 4 is due on Thursday, 9/24. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge)
• (9-17) Starting from next week, Richie's office hours have been moved to 400 Cory (Hughes Room).
• (9-14) There was a typo in problem #1)c) of the originally posted version of HW#3.  A corrected version has been posted; the first sentence of that problem should begin with: "By adding just two more transistors to the circuit shown above, ..."

Week 3

• Homework 3 is due on Thursday, 9/17. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge)
• (9-7) Because of Labor Day, for this week only Milos' office hours have been moved to Tues. 2-3pm in 508 Cory.

Week 2

• Homework 2 is due on Thursday, 9/10. Drop box in 240 Cory (Student Lounge)
• (9-3) Starting from next Tuesday (9-8), our classroom has been moved to 155 Kroeber.
• Since next Monday is labor day, for this week only Yue will hold his discussion session on Fri. from 2-3pm in 293 Cory.
• Milos will hold office hours on Monday from 2-3pm in 508 Cory Hall.
• 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.