EE370

Digital Electronics

L1: Introduction

B. Mazhari
Dept. of EE, IIT Kanpur

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 A Brief Historical Perspective

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Before Advent of Electronics

In 1822, Charles
Babbage presented a
small cogwheel assembly
that demonstrated the
operation of his difference
engine, a mechanical
calculator which would be
capable of holding and
manipulating seven
numbers of 31 decimal
digits each. It was the first
time that a calculating
machine could work
automatically using as
input results from its
The London Science Museum's working difference
engine, built a century and a half after Charles previous operations It
Babbage's design….wikipedia was the first calculating
machine to use a printer.
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Slide Rule

source ….wikipedia
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 The Electronics revolution started with the invention of the Triode (1906)

Anode

Grid

Lee De Forest : 1873-1961 Cathode

VO
A IA Transconductance
RL
G I A
VG
VSS
VG

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 Triode revolutionized information processing

VAA
VAA
R
RL
RL
Q
VO VO= A+B
A

VG
K
B
A
Q
GND
S
GND

NOR NOR Latch

Inverter

Triode enabled Processing, Storage and Communication,

of Information

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 ENIAC: Electronic numerical
Integrator and computer: 1946

The ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum

tubes, along with 70,000 resistors,
10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 6,000
manual switches and 5 million
soldered joints
30 x 50 feet room

It weighed 30 tons, consumed 160 kilowatts of electrical power,

Records from 1952 show that approximately 19,000 vacuum tubes had to be replaced in
that year alone, which averages out to about 50 tubes a day!

•Although the seed of information revolution was there in

Triode itself, it was difficult to harness it
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Transistor: 1948
VC
C IC

RL
B
E
VCC
VB

I C I
 C
VBE VCE

VCE
  1
VBE

A Transistor could do most of what a

triode could do and it was smaller,
consumed less power and was more
reliable

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 What occupied a room earlier, now occupied a table top

-530 germanium transistors and

2300 diodes.

-Size 420 x 440 x 250 mm (16.5" x

17.3" x 9.8"), 25Kg

-Cost 535 thousand yen (about

US$1,490)

-90 Watts of power

Sharp CS-10A, 1964

Integration level was better but still limited

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 Discrete Circuit
Silicon

Case P
E

B
C N
-
P

8-bit adder

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 8-bit adder 288 Tr.

36 Tr.

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 Discrete Transistor Circuit
288 Tr.

~120 cm 2 ~11cm×11cm

24 Tr 2
~ ~2.4 Tr/cm
10 cm 2

24k would occupy 1m x 1m !

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 Integration level is limited in a Discrete Circuit

Silicon

N
Case
E

P B
C N
-
P

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Integrated Circuit : 1958
March 24, 1959: Texas Ins. demonstrated
an Integrated multivibrator with the discrete
equivalent of two capacitors, eight resistors,
and two diffused - base transistors; and a
phase-shift oscillator, with the equivalent of
three capacitors, five resistors, and one
transistor.
In a press release, the company wrote that
Jack Kilby Robert Noyce "they are considered to approach the ultimate
in miniaturizing complex electronic circuitry and
components.“

In October 1961, the company announced its

Series 51, with five different digital-circuit logic
modules—flip-flops, counters, NOR gates,
NAND gates, and exclusive ORs. They cost
$95 in sample quantities and $65 each in
quantities of 100.
Phase shift oscillator

Nobel prize in Physics 2000

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 Monolithic Integration

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 ~66 m×48 m
for 1 m technology

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 17
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 Monolithic implementation
288 Tr.

~270 m×100 m
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 Packaged IC

~270 m×100 m

Length ~2.5×14 = 35mm

Width~7.62mm

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 Discrete vs. Monolithic Circuit

288 Tr circuit.

~120 cm 2 ~11cm×11cm ~ 35mm  7.62mm 20

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The first microprocessor sold by
This revolutionary
Intel was the four-bit 4004 in
microprocessor, measuring 1/8th
1971. It was designed to work in
by 1/6th of an inch—the size of a
conjunction with three other
fingernail—delivered the same
microchips, the 4001 ROM, 4002
computing power as the first
RAM and the 4003 Shift Register.
electronic computer, the ENIAC*,
It had 2300 transistors designed
built in 1946, which filled an
using a 10um PMOS process.
entire room and used 18,000
Maximum clock rate was 740kHz
vacuum tubes.
 Key Issue: Integration

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Increased levels of integration is still challenging

3.3 mm
~2k Tr and die size 10mm2

3.3 mm 1.32 cm

~64k Tr
2k 2k 2k 2k

2k
1.32 cm
2k

die size 174mm2 2k

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IC Economics

C Dev.
IC Cost = C = + C Prod.
N

C Pr od .  C Die  C Pack .  Ctest

Cwafer  w
C Die ~
 0.85 A
wafer AIC    d

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Yield generally decreases with die size

~16/20 = 80% ~2/6 = 33%

Yield depends on defect density die size

B. Mazhari, IITK
C Die  AIC 4
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Source: INTEGRATED CIRCUIT ENGINEERING CORPORATION

1180
476 / 581  0.82  0.4  0.6
3.1  0.4  0.6
C IC ~ 380   4.3$
B. Mazhari, IITK 0.95 0.95 26
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 17.5  25.75  35
C IC ~  $112
B. Mazhari, IITK 0.7 27
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 The Pentium FDIV bug was a computer bug that affected
the floating point unit (FPU) of the early Intel Pentium
processors. Because of the bug, the processor could return
incorrect binary floating point results when dividing a number.
Intel attributed the error to missing entries in the lookup table
used by the floating-point division circuitry.

The severity of the FDIV bug is debated. Intel, producer of the

affected chip, claims that the common user would experience
it once every 27,000 years while IBM, manufacturer of a chip
competing with Intel's Pentium, claims that the common user
would experience it once every 24 days.

In December 1994, Intel recalled the defective processors. In

January 1995, Intel announced "a pre-tax charge of $475
million against earnings, ostensibly the total cost associated
with replacement of the flawed processors.“….wikipedia
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 One cannot simply increase circuit complexity as it result in
increased die area, reduced yield and thus unacceptable
cost

Once could partition the circuit into a chipset and integrate

them on a PCB

2k 2k 2k 2k

2k

2k

2k

Off-chip interconnects are longer due to which they cause

more
B. Mazhari, IITK delay and incur a power penalty as well.
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CMOS technology is Scalable

SiO2

SiO2
Si

Both horizontal and vertical dimensions can be shrunk to not

only reduce area but improve the speed of the transistor as
wellIITK
B. Mazhari,
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CMOS technology is Scalable

2 mm

3.3 mm 2 mm

3.3 mm
~2k Tr , die size ~4mm2
~2k Tr , die size ~10mm2 For 6µm technology
For 10µm technology

3.3 mm
~5.5k Tr , die size ~10mm2
For 6µm technology

3.3 mm
B. Mazhari, IITK
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Moore’s law (1965)
“cramming more components onto integrated circuits”

“Complexity of integrated circuits has approximately doubled every year since

their introduction. Cost per function has decreased several thousand-fold,
while system performance and reliability have been improved
dramatically…1975”
B. Mazhari, IITK
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Intel Microprocessors
processor Year Technology Transistors Clock speed

4004 1971 10u 2.3k 740k

C8008 1972 10u 3.5k 500k

8080 1974 6u 4.5k 2M

P8085 1976 3u 6.5k 3M

(100 million
sold)

8086 1978 3u 29k 5M

(16 bit)
80186 1982 3u 55k 6M

80286 1982 1.5u 134k 6M

80386 1985 1.5u 275k 16M

(32 bit )
processor year technology transistors Clock speed

i486 1989 1um 1.2M 25M

pentium 1993 0.8u 3.1M 66M

Pentium pro 1995 0.6u 5.5M 200M

Pentium II 1997 0.25u 7.5M 300M

Pentium III 1999 180n 9.5M 500M

Pentium IV 2000 180nm 42M 1.5G

Pentium M 2002 90nm 55M 1.7G

itanium 2002 130nm 220 1G

Quad core 2006 65nm 291M 2.93G

64 bit
Digital IC design involves not only logic design but also its
translation to transistor schematic and physical layout. It also
involves developing test patterns that can be used to test the
fabricated circuit

Design is complex requiring high skill, is expensive and time

consuming and only justified for very high volume applications
Traditionaly Custom Digital system design has been carried out
using off-the-shellf general purpose digital ICs

7493: 4 bit binary counter

 IC manufacturer System designer

Can offer complex Ics but only if Would like to offer a solution that
volume is high uses as few Ics but due to custom
design volume is low.

Solution : Programmable ICs

Microprocessors, microcontrollers, DSP processors etc

FPGA : field programmable gate arrays