UNIT III COMBINATIONAL AND SEQUENTIAL CIRCUIT DESIGN

Part –A (2 Marks)
1. What is a BiCMOS?
BiCMOS is a type of integrated circuit that uses both bipolar and CMOS technologies.
2. What are the problems of BiCMOS?
Fabrication is duffucult.
Difficult to tune both bipolar and MOS components.
3. What is pull down device? [AUC NOV 2013]
A device connected so as to pull the output voltage to the lower supply voltage usually
0V is called pull down device.
4. What is pull up device? [AUC NOV 2010,2011,2012]
A device connected so as to pull the output voltage to the upper supply voltage usually
VDD is called pull up device.
5. What are the types of gate arrays in ASIC ? [AUC NOV 2013]
Channeled gate arrays, channel less gate arrays , Structured gate arrays.
6. What is LEF mean?
LEF is an ASCII data format used to describe a standard cell library.
LEF file contains technology and site extension.
7. What is DEF mean?
DEF is an ASCII data format to describe design related information.
8. What are the various design changes you do to meet design power targets?
Level shifters for performance improvement.
Reducing leakage power by designing mulit threshold voltage areas.
By employing clock gating cells ,power saving can be achieved.
9. List the drawbacks of ratioed circuits .[AUC MAY 2011]
Slow rising transistions
High static power dissipation.
10. Define max-delay failure and min-delay failure in sequential circuits.[AUC MAY
2011]
If the combinational logic delay is too large, the receiving element will miss the setup
time and sample improper values. This is called max-delay failure.

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 When the hold time is large and contamination delay is small ,the data incorrectly
propagates through two successive elements on one clock edge ,corrupting the state of
system. This is called min –delay failure.
11. Draw the CMOS bistable element. [AUC MAY 2011]

12. Write a note on CMOS transmission gate logic [AUC APR 2011]

13. What is bubble pushing ?[AUC NOV 2009,2012]

Bubble pushing is a which is applied for static CMOS structure that is dual in nature that
can be obtained using duality principle of demorgan’s theorem.
14. What is dynamic CMOS logic ?
Dynamic circuits rely on the temporary storage of signal values on the capacitance of
high impedance nodes.
15. What is precharge phase ?
The input to the next stage is charged up through the PMOS transistor when the clock is
low ,this phase of the clock is known as precharge phase.
16. What is evaluation phase ?
When the clock is high, the PMOS is cutoff and the NMOS is turned on thereby
disconnecting the output node from Vdd and providing a possible pull down path to
ground through the NMOS transistor. This is called as evaluation phase.

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17. What is called sequencing overhead?
Sequencing elements delay tokens that arrive too early ,preventing them from catching
up with previous token. This creates additional delay that reduces performance of the
system .This extra delay is called sequencing overhead.
18. Define contamination delay.
It is the required interval between invalid input and invalid output is called contamination
delay.
19. Define propagation delay.
It is the required interval to change the output and after applying the input signal is called
propogation delay.
20. Define setup time. [AUC APR 2008]
The time before the clock edge that the D input has to be stable is called setup time.
21. Define hold time .
The time after the clock edge that the D input has to be stable is called hold time.
22. What is clock skew ?[AUC NOV 2013]
Delay in arrival of clock signals that cuts the time available for useful compilation is
called clock skew.
23. What is pulsed latch?
Pulsed latch consists of set of pass gates that keeps the value stored in PL output.
24. What is klass semidynamic flip flop ?
It is domino style flip flop used to reduce load on the data network.
25. What is synchronizer ?
A synchronizer is a circuit that accepts an input that can change at arbitrary times and
produces an output aligned to the synchronizers clock.
26. What is arbiter?
An arbiter is a circuit designed to determine which of several signals arrive first.

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 PART –B(16 MARKS)
1. Explain briefly about static CMOS Design [AUC NOV 2010,APR 2012]

CMOS circuit falls under the category of

Static CMOS
Dynamic CMOS

Static CMOS design is a combination of two networks

Pull –up network

Pull-Down network

At every point of time ,each gate output is connected to either VDD or VSS via a low
resistance path.

Static CMOS logic gate

Important properties

At any instant of time ,the output is connected to either VDD or VSS.

All functions are composed of either AND ‘ed or OR ‘ed sub functions.
AND function composed of PMOS transistor in parallel (Pull –Down network).
ORfunction composed of PMOS transistor in series (Pull –UP network.
The function of PUN – provide a connection between the output and VDD ,when the
output of logic gate is ‘1’.
The function of PDN – provide a connection between the output and Vss ,when the
output of logic gate is ‘0’.
Bubble Pushing

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 Static CMOs structure are dual network which can be obtained by using duality
theorem.

2. Discuss in detail about the ratioed circuit and dynamic circuit CMOS logic
configurations .[AUC MAY 2011]

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3. Discuss in detail the characteristic of CMOS Pass – Transistor Logic.

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4. Explain briefly about Dynamic CMOS Design [AUC May 2011]

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5. Describe briefly about Signal Integrity Issues in Dynamic Design.

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Cascading Dynamic Gates

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Problems

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6. Explain briefly about the working principle of LATCHES and REGISTERS.
Bistability Principle

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Dynamic Transmission Edge Triggered Flip Flops

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7. Explain in detail about CLOCK SKEW in CMOS design

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 8. Explain briefly about KLASS SEMIDYNAMIC FLIP-FLOP (SDFF)

The Klass semidynamic flip-flop (SDFF) is a cross between a pulsed latch and a flip-flop. Like
the Partovi pulsed latch, it operates on the principle of intersecting pulses.
However, it uses a dynamic NAND gate in place of the static NAND.
While the clock is low, X precharges high and Q holds its old state. When the clock rises, the
dynamic NAND evaluates. If D is 0, X remains high and the top nMOS transistor turns OFF. If D
is 1 and X starts to fall low, the transistor remains ON to finish the transition. This allows for a
short pulse and hold time.
The dynamic front end serves as the master latch,while the second stage serves as the slave.
The weak cross-coupled inverters staticize the flip-flop and the final inverter buffers the output
node.
Like a pulsed latch, the SDFF accepts rising inputs slightly after the rising clock edge. Like a
flip-flop, falling inputs must set up before the rising clock edge. It is called semidynamic because
it combines the dynamic input stage with static operation.

Differential Flip-Flops
Differential flip-flops accept true and complementary inputs and produce true and omplementary
outputs. They are built from a clocked sense amplifier so that they can rapidly respond to small
differential input voltages. While they are larger than an ordinary singleended flip-flop—having
an extra inverter to produce the complementary output—theywork well with low-swing inputs
such as register file bitlines and lowswing busses .

Figure 10.29(a) shows a differential sense-amplifier flip-flop (SA-F/F) receiving differential inputs
and producing a differential output [Matsui94]. When the clock is low, the internal nodes X and X
precharge. When the clock rises, one of the two nodes is pulled down, while the cross-coupled
pMOS transistors act as a keeper for the other node. The SR latch formed by the cross-coupled
NAND gates behaves as a slave stage, capturing the output and holding it through precharge.

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The flip-flop can amplify and respond to small differential input voltages, or it can use an inverter
to derive the complementary input from D.

Dual Edge-Triggered Flip-Flops

Two conceptual designs for DET flipflops are shown in Figure along with circuit realizations In
the master-slave design of two separate master latches operate on opposite phases of the
clock. The multiplexer, serving in place of the slave latch, selects the result of the opaque
master. Transistor-level implementation of this design is shown in figure

9. Write a brief note on Radiation-Hardened Flip-Flops

Soft errors caused by alpha particles or cosmic rays were once of primary concern in memories
because RAM cells have the smallest node capacitance and weakest feedback, so they are
easily disturbed, as discussed in Section 7.3.4. As transistors have scaled, soft error rates for
flip-flops have increased to the point that they are important for high-reliability systems.
Radiation-hardened flip-flops are designed to resist such errors. They are also critically
important for space applications where the cosmic ray flux is much greater.
The simplest way to minimize soft errors is to use a storage node holding enough charge that a
particle strike is unlikely to flip the state. This has become difficult in nanometer processes
because scaling reduces both the capacitance and voltage, greatly decreasing the charge. An
unusually large storage node can still reduce the probability of disturbance, but it comes at a
cost in performance, energy, and area.

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 Pulsed Latches Pulsed latches are faster than flip-flops and offer some time borrowing
capability at the expense of greater hold times. They have fewer clocked transistors and hence
lower power consumption. If intentional time borrowing is not necessary,

Transparent Latches Transparent latches also have lower sequencing overhead than flip-flops
and are attractive because they permit nearly half a cycle of time borrowing.
One latch must be placed in each half-cycle. Data can arrive at the latch any time the latch is
transparent. A convenient design approach is to nominally place the latch at the beginning of
each half-cycle. Then time borrowing occurs when the logic in one half-cycle is longer than
nominal and data does not arrive at the next latch until some time into the next half-cycle.

Figure illustrates pipeline timing for short and long logic paths between latches.

When the path is short (a), the data arrives at the second latch early and is delayed until the
rising edge. Therefore, it is natural to consider latches residing at the beginning of their half-
cycle because short paths automatically adjust to operate this way.

When the path is longer (b), it borrows time from the first half-cycle into the second.
10. Explain briefly about i) Synchronizers ii) Arbiters
A synchronizer is a circuit that accepts an input that can change at arbitrary times and produces
an output aligned to the synchronizer’s clock. Because the input can change during the
synchronizer’s aperture, the synchronizer has a nonzero probability of producing a metastable
output.
This section first examines the response of a latch to an analog voltage that can change near
the sampling clock edge. The latch can enter a metastable state for some amount of time that is
unbounded, although the probability ofremaining metastable drops off exponentially with time.

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i)A Simple Synchronizer
A synchronizer accepts an input D and a clock . It produces an output Q that ought to be valid
some bounded delay after the clock. The synchronizer has an aperture defined by a setup and
hold time around the rising edge of the clock. If the data is stable during the aperture, Q should
equal D. If the data changes during the aperture, Q can be chosen arbitrarily.
Figure 10.46 shows a simple synchronizer built from a pair of flip-flops. F1 samples the
asynchronous input D. The output X may be metastable for some time, but will settle to a good
level with high probability.
F2 samples X and produces an output Q that should be a valid logic level and be aligned with
the clock. The synchronizer has a latency of one clock cycle, Tc . It can fail if X has not settled
to a valid level by a setup time before the second clock edge.

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ii) Arbiters
The arbiter of is closely related to the synchronizer. It determines which of two inputs arrived
first. If the spacing between the inputs exceeds some aperture time, the first input should be
acknowledged. If the spacing is smaller, exactly one of the two inputs should be acknowledged,
but the choice is arbitrary.

For example, in a television game show, two contestants may pound buttons to answer a
question. If one presses the button first, she should be acknowledged. If both press the button
at times too close to distinguish, the host may choose one of the two contestants arbitrarily

Figure shows an arbiter built from an SR latch and a four-transistor metastability filter. If one of
the request inputs arrives well before the other, the latch will respond appropriately. However, if
they arrive at nearly the same time, the latch may be driven into metastability.
The filter keeps both acknowledge signals low until the voltage difference between the internal
nodes n1 and n2 exceeds Vt , indicating that a decision has been made. .
Such an asynchronous arbiter will never produce metastable outputs. However, the time
required to make the decision can be unbounded,

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