This book features the proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute "Manipulating Quantum Coherence in Solid State Systems," held in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, August 2005, which presented a fundamental introduction to solid-state approaches to achieving quantum computation. This proceedings volume describes the properties of quantum coherence in semiconductor spin-based systems and the behavior of quantum coherence in superconducting systems.

This book focuses on the latest research and developments in photovoltaic (PV) power plants, and provides extensive coverage of fundamental theories, current research and developmental activities, and new approaches intended to overcome a number of critical limitations in today's grid integration technologies. The design and implementation process for large-scale solar PV power plants is introduced. The content provided will actively support the development of future renewable power plants and smart grid applications. The book will be of interest to researchers, professionals and graduate students in electrical and electronics fields seeking to understand the related technologies involved in PV power plants.

This book addresses future video coding from the perspective of hardware implementation and architecture design, with particular focus on approximate computing and the energy-quality scalability paradigm. Challenges in deploying VLSI architectures for video coding are identified and potential solutions postulated with reference to recent research in the field. The book offers systematic coverage of the designs, techniques and paradigms that will most likely be exploited in the design of VLSI architectures for future video coding systems. Written by a team of expert authors from around the world, and brought together by an editor who is a recognised authority in the field, this book is a useful resource for academics and industry professionals working on VLSI implementation of video codecs.

This book presents state-of-the-art techniques for radiation hardened high-resolution Time-to-Digital converters and low noise frequency synthesizers. Throughout the book, advanced degradation mechanisms and error sources are discussed and several ways to prevent such errors are presented. An overview of the prerequisite physics of nuclear interactions is given that has been compiled in an easy to understand chapter. The book is structured in a way that different hardening techniques and solutions are supported by theory and experimental data with their various tradeoffs. Based on leading-edge research, conducted in collaboration between KU Leuven and CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research Describes in detail advanced techniques to harden circuits against ionizing radiation Provides a practical way to learn and understand radiation effects in time-based circuits Includes an introduction to the underlying physics, circuit design, and advanced techniques accompanied with experimental data

Analog CMOS Microelectronic Circuits describes novel approaches for analog electronic interfaces design, especially for resistive and capacitive sensors showing a wide variation range, with the intent to cover a lack of solutions in the literature. After an initial description of sensors and main definitions, novel electronic circuits, which do not require any initial calibrations, are described; they show both AC and DC excitation voltage for the employed sensor, and use both voltage-mode and current-mode approaches. The proposed interfaces can be realized both as prototype boards, for fast characterization (in this sense, they can be easily implemented by students and researchers), and as integrated circuits, using modern low-voltage low-power design techniques (in this case, specialist analog microelectronic researchers will find them useful). The primary audience of Analog CMOS Microelectronic Circuits are: analog circuit designers, sensor companies, Ph.D. students on analog microelectronics, undergraduate and postgraduate students in electronic engineering.

The success of VHDL since it has been balloted in 1987 as an IEEE standard may look incomprehensible to the large population of hardware designers, who had never heared of Hardware Description Languages before (for at least 90% of them), as well as to the few hundreds of specialists who had been working on these languages for a long time (25 years for some of them). Until 1988, only a very small subset of designers, in a few large companies, were used to describe their designs using a proprietary HDL, or sometimes a HDL inherited from a University when some software environment happened to be developped around it, allowing usability by third parties. A number of benefits were definitely recognized to this practice, such as functional verification of a specification through simulation, first performance evaluation of a tentative design, and sometimes automatic microprogram generation or even automatic high level synthesis. As there was apparently no market for HDL's, the ECAD vendors did not care about them, start-up companies were seldom able to survive in this area, and large users of proprietary tools were spending more and more people and money just to maintain their internal system.

This monograph is motivated by the challenges faced in designing reliable VLSI systems in modern VLSI processes. The reliable operation of integrated circuits (ICs) has become increasingly dif?cult to achieve in the deep submicron (DSM) era. With continuouslydecreasing device feature sizes, combinedwith lower supply voltages and higher operating frequencies, the noise immunity of VLSI circuits is decreasing alarmingly. Thus, VLSI circuits are becoming more vulnerable to noise effects such as crosstalk, power supply variations, and radiation-inducedsoft errors. Among these noise sources, soft errors(or error caused by radiation particle strikes) have become an increasingly troublesome issue for memory arrays as well as c- binational logic circuits. Also, in the DSM era, process variations are increasing at a signi?cant rate, making it more dif?cult to design reliable VLSI circuits. Hence, it is important to ef?ciently design robust VLSI circuits that are resilient to radiation particle strikes and process variations. The work presented in this research mo- graph presents several analysis and design techniques with the goal of realizing VLSI circuits, which are radiation and process variation tolerant.

When it comes to frameworks, the familiar story of the elephant and the six blind philosophers seems to apply. As each philoso pher encountered a separate part of the elephant, each pronounced his considered, but flawed judgement. One blind philosopher felt a leg and thought it a tree. Another felt the tail and thought he held a rope. Another felt the elephant's flank and thought he stood before a wall. We're supposed to learn about snap judgements from this alle gory, but its author might well have been describing design automation frameworks. For in the reality of today's product development requirements, a framework must be many things to many people. xiv CAD Frameworks: Integration Technology for CAD As the authors of this book note, framework design is an optimi zation problem. Somehow, it has to be both a superior rope for one and a tremendous tree for another. Somehow it needs to provide a standard environment for exploiting the full potential of computer-aided engineering tools. And, somehow, it has to make real such abstractions as interoperability and interchangeability. For years, we've talked about a framework as something that provides application-oriented services, just as an operating system provides system-level support. And for years, that simple statement has hid the tremendous complexity of actually providing those services."

Leaf Cell and Hierarchical Compaction Techniques presents novel algorithms developed for the compaction of large layouts. These algorithms have been implemented as part of a system that has been used on many industrial designs. The focus of Leaf Cell and Hierarchical Compaction Techniques is three-fold. First, new ideas for compaction of leaf cells are presented. These cells can range from small transistor-level layouts to very large layouts generated by automatic Place and Route tools. Second, new approaches for hierarchical pitchmatching compaction are described and the concept of a Minimum Design is introduced. The system for hierarchical compaction is built on top of the leaf cell compaction engine and uses the algorithms implemented for leaf cell compaction in a modular fashion. Third, a new representation for designs called Virtual Interface, which allows for efficient topological specification and representation of hierarchical layouts, is outlined. The Virtual Interface representation binds all of the algorithms and their implementations for leaf and hierarchical compaction into an intuitive and easy-to-use system. From the Foreword: ...In this book, the authors provide a comprehensive approach to compaction based on carefully conceived abstractions. They describe the design of algorithms that provide true hierarchical compaction based on linear programming, but cut down the complexity of the computations through introduction of innovative representations that capture the provably minimum amount of required information needed for correct compaction. In most compaction algorithms, the complexity goes up with the number of design objects, but in this approach, complexity is due to the irregularity of the design, and hence is often tractable for most designs which incorporate substantial regularity. Here the reader will find an elegant treatment of the many challenges of compaction, and a clear conceptual focus that provides a unified approach to all aspects of the compaction task...' Jonathan Allen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Computer-Aided Design of Analog Circuits and Systems brings together in one place important contributions and state-of-the-art research results in the rapidly advancing area of computer-aided design of analog circuits and systems. This book serves as an excellent reference, providing insights into some of the most important issues in the field.

Physical Design for Multichip Modules collects together a large body of important research work that has been conducted in recent years in the area of Multichip Module (MCM) design. The material consists of a survey of published results as well as original work by the authors. All major aspects of MCM physical design are discussed, including interconnect analysis and modeling, system partitioning and placement, and multilayer routing. For readers unfamiliar with MCMs, this book presents an overview of the different MCM technologies available today. An in-depth discussion of various recent approaches to interconnect analysis are also presented. Remaining chapters discuss the problems of partitioning, placement, and multilayer routing, with an emphasis on timing performance. For the first time, data from a wide range of sources is integrated to present a clear picture of a new, challenging and very important research area. For students and researchers looking for interesting research topics, open problems and suggestions for further research are clearly stated. Points of interest include: Clear overview of MCM technology and its relationship to physical design; Emphasis on performance-driven design, with a chapter devoted to recent techniques for rapid performance analysis and modeling of MCM interconnects; Different approaches to multilayer MCM routing collected together and compared for the first time; Explanation of algorithms is not overly mathematical, yet is detailed enough to give readers a clear understanding of the approach; Quantitative data provided wherever possible for comparison of different approaches; A comprehensive list of references to recent literature on MCMs provided.

Integrated Fiber-Optic Receivers covers many aspects of the design of integrated circuits for fiber-optic receivers and other high-speed serial data links. Fundamental concepts are explained at the system level, circuit level, and semiconductor device level. Techniques for extracting timing information from the random data stream are described in considerable detail, as are all other aspects of receiver design. Integrated Fiber-Optic Receivers is organized in two parts. Part I covers the theory of communications systems as it applies to high-speed PAM (Pulse Amplitude Modulation) systems. The primary emphasis is on clock recovery circuits. Because theoretical concepts are generally grasped more easily by example, Part II is devoted to circuit design issues that illustrate example realizations of architectures described in Part I. Part II presents the transistor-level design, and measured results, of fundamental building blocks and test circuits. For practicing engineers, more than just reporting on the results of specific circuits, this book serves as a tutorial on the design of integrated high-speed broadband PAM data systems, such as: repeaters in long-haul, fiber-optic, trunk-lines transceivers for use in LANs and WANs; read channels for high-density data storage devices; and wireless communication handsets. Integrated Fiber-Optic Receivers may be used as a text for advanced courses in both analog circuit design and communication systems.

Describing and designing complex electronic systems has become an overwhelming activit)' for which VHDL is showing increasingly useful and promising support. Although created as a description language. VHDL is being increasingly used as a simulatable and synthcsizablcdcsign language. For the first time, here is abook which describesa number of unique and powerful ways VHDL can be used to solve typical design problems in systems ** ones which must be designed correctly in vcry short periodsoflime. Typically useful lcchniquessuch as switch-level modeling, mixed analog and digital modelling, and advanced synthesis for which VHDL showsgrealpromisearefully presented. Thesemeth* ods are bOlh immedial.ely applicable. and indicale lIle potential of VHDL in efficiently modelling Ihe real worldofelectronic systems. Sinceitsinception.there hasbeen adesireforananalogdescription languageconsistent with (and integrated with) VHDL. Until recently. VHDL could onl)' be applied to digital circuits.ootlhedreamofdescribingandsimulatingmixedanalogand digitalcircuitsis now a reality as described herein. Describing the functionality of analog circuits including intetoperability with digital circuits using the VHDL paradigm is surprisingly easy and powerful. The approach outlined by the authors presages a significant advance in the simulation of mixed systems.

One of the keys to success in the IC industry is getting a new product to market in a timely fashion and being able to produce that product with sufficient yield to be profitable. There are two ways to increase yield: by improving the control of the manufacturing process and by designing the process and the circuits in such a way as to minimize the effect of the inherent variations of the process on performance. The latter is typically referred to as "design for manufacture" or "statistical design." As device sizes continue to shrink, the effects of the inherent fluctuations in the IC fabrication process will have an even more obvious effect on circuit performance. And design for manufacture will increase in importance. We have been working in the area of statistically based computer aided design for more than 13 years. During the last decade we have been working with each other, and individually with our students, to develop methods and CAD tools that can be used to improve yield during the design and manufacturing phases of IC realization. This effort has resulted in a large number of publications that have appeared in a variety of journals and conference proceedings. Thus our motivation in writing this book is to put, in one place, a description of our approach to IC yield enhancement. While the work that is contained in this book has appeared in the open literature, we have attempted to use a consistent notation throughout this book.

This book offers students and those new to the topic of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) a broad introduction, before going into details of the state-of-the-art design techniques for SAR and DS converters, including the latest research topics, which are valuable for IC design engineers as well as users of ADCs in applications. The book then addresses important topics, such as correct connectivity of ADCs in an application, the verification, characterization and testing of ADCs that ensure high-quality end products. Analog-to-digital converters are the central element in any data processing system and regulation loops such as modems or electrical motor drives. They significantly affect the performance and resolution of a system or end product. System development engineers need to be familiar with the performance parameters of the converters and understand the advantages and disadvantages of the various architectures. Integrated circuit development engineers have to overcome the problem of achieving high performance and resolution with the lowest possible power dissipation, while the digital circuitry generates distortion in supply, ground and substrate. This book explains the connections and gives suggestions for obtaining the highest possible resolution. Novel trends are illustrated in the design of analog-to-digital converters based on successive approximation and the difficulties in the development of continuous-time delta-sigma modulators are also discussed.

Rapid advances in microelectronic integration and the advent of Systems-on-Chip have fueled the need for high-level synthesis, i.e., an automated approach to the synthesis of hardware from behavioral descriptions.
SPARK: A Parallelizing Approach to the High - Level Synthesis of Digital Circuits presents a novel approach to the high-level synthesis of digital circuits -- that of parallelizing high-level synthesis (PHLS). This approach uses aggressive code parallelizing and code motion techniques to discover circuit optimization opportunities beyond what is possible with traditional high-level synthesis. This PHLS approach addresses the problems of the poor quality of synthesis results and the lack of controllability over the transformations applied during the high-level synthesis of system descriptions with complex control flows, that is, with nested conditionals and loops.
Also described are speculative code motion techniques and dynamic compiler transformations that optimize the circuit quality in terms of cycle time, circuit size and interconnect costs. We describe the SPARK parallelizing high-level synthesis framework in which we have implemented these techniques and demonstrate the utility of SPARK's PHLS approach using designs derived from multimedia and image processing applications. We also present a case study of an instruction length decoder derived from the Intel Pentium-class of microprocessors. This case study serves as an example of a typical microprocessor functional block with complex control flow and demonstrates how our techniques are useful for such designs.
SPARK: A Parallelizing Approach to the High - Level Synthesis of Digital Circuits is targeted mainlyto embedded system designers and researchers. This includes people working on design and design automation. The book is useful for researchers and design automation engineers who wish to understand how the main problems hindering the adoption of high-level synthesis among designers.

This book describes a novel approach for the design of embedded systems and industrial automation systems, using a unified model-driven approach that is applicable in both domains. The authors illustrate their methodology, using the IEC 61499 standard as the main vehicle for specification, verification, static timing analysis and automated code synthesis. The well-known synchronous approach is used as the main vehicle for defining an unambiguous semantics that ensures determinism and deadlock freedom. The proposed approach also ensures very efficient implementations either on small-scale embedded devices or on industry-scale programmable automation controllers (PACs). It can be used for both centralized and distributed implementations. Significantly, the proposed approach can be used without the need for any run-time support. This approach, for the first time, blurs the gap between embedded systems and automation systems and can be applied in wide-ranging applications in automotive, robotics, and industrial control systems. Several realistic examples are used to demonstrate for readers how the methodology can enable them to reduce the time-to-market, while improving the design quality and productivity.

Modern consumers carry many electronic devices, like a mobile phone, digital camera, GPS, PDA and an MP3 player. The functionality of each of these devices has gone through an important evolution over recent years, with a steep increase in both the number of features as in the quality of the services that they provide. However, providing the required compute power to support (an uncompromised combination of) all this functionality is highly non-trivial. Designing processors that meet the demanding requirements of future mobile devices requires the optimization of the embedded system in general and of the embedded processors in particular, as they should strike the correct balance between flexibility, energy efficiency and performance. In general, a designer will try to minimize the energy consumption (as far as needed) for a given performance, with a sufficient flexibility. However, achieving this goal is already complex when looking at the processor in isolation, but, in reality, the processor is a single component in a more complex system. In order to design such complex system successfully, critical decisions during the design of each individual component should take into account effect on the other parts, with a clear goal to move to a global Pareto optimum in the complete multi-dimensional exploration space.

In the complex, global design of battery-operated embedded systems, the focus of Ultra-Low Energy Domain-Specific Instruction-Set Processors is on the energy-aware architecture exploration of domain-specific instruction-set processors and the co-optimization of the datapath architecture, foreground memory, and instruction memory organisation with a link to the required mapping techniques or compiler steps at the early stages of the design. By performing an extensive energy breakdown experiment for a complete embedded platform, both energy and performance bottlenecks have been identified, together with the important relations between the different components. Based on this knowledge, architecture extensions are proposed for all the bottlenecks.

When confronted with the hows and whys of nature's computational engines, some prefer to focus upon neural function: addressing issues of neural system behavior and its relation to natural intelligence. Then there are those who prefer the study of the "mechanics" of neural systems: the nuts and bolts of the "wetware": the neurons and synapses. Those who investigate pulse coded implementations ofartificial neural networks know what it means to stand at the boundary which lies between these two worlds: not just asking why natural neural systems behave as they do, but also how they achieve their marvelous feats. The research results presented in this book not only address more conventional abstract notions of neural-like processing, but also the more specific details ofneural-like processors. It has been established for some time that natural neural systems perform a great deal of information processing via electrochemical pulses. Accordingly, pulse coded neural network concepts are receiving increased attention in artificial neural network research. This increased interest is compounded by continuing advances in the field of VLSI circuit design. This is the first time in history in which it is practical to construct networks of neuron-like circuits of reasonable complexity that can be applied to real problems. We believe that the pioneering work in artificial neural systems presented in this book will lead to further advances that will not only be useful in some practical sense, but may also provide some additional insight into the operation of their natural counterparts.

For real-time systems, the worst-case execution time (WCET) is the key objective to be considered. Traditionally, code for real-time systems is generated without taking this objective into account and the WCET is computed only after code generation. Worst-Case Execution Time Aware Compilation Techniques for Real-Time Systems presents the first comprehensive approach integrating WCET considerations into the code generation process. Based on the proposed reconciliation between a compiler and a timing analyzer, a wide range of novel optimization techniques is provided. Among others, the techniques cover source code and assembly level optimizations, exploit machine learning techniques and address the design of modern systems that have to meet multiple objectives.

Using these optimizations, the WCET of real-time applications can be reduced by about 30% to 45% on the average. This opens opportunities for decreasing clock speeds, costs and energy consumption of embedded processors. The proposed techniques can be used for all types real-time systems, including automotive and avionics IT systems.

This title introduces state-of-the-art design principles for SOI circuit design, and is primarily concerned with circuit-related issues. It considers SOI material in terms of implementation that is promising or has been used elsewhere in circuit development, with historical perspective where appropriate.

Recently there has been increased interest in the development of computer-aided design programs to support the system level designer of integrated circuits more actively. Such design tools hold the promise of raising the level of abstraction at which an integrated circuit is designed, thus releasing the current designers from many of the details of logic and circuit level design. The promise further suggests that a whole new group of designers in neighboring engineering and science disciplines, with far less understanding of integrated circuit design, will also be able to increase their productivity and the functionality of the systems they design. This promise has been made repeatedly as each new higher level of computer-aided design tool is introduced and has repeatedly fallen short of fulfillment. This book presents the results of research aimed at introducing yet higher levels of design tools that will inch the integrated circuit design community closer to the fulfillment of that promise. 1. 1. SYNTHESIS OF INTEGRATED CmCUITS In the integrated circuit (Ie) design process, a behavior that meets certain specifications is conceived for a system, the behavior is used to produce a design in terms of a set of structural logic elements, and these logic elements are mapped onto physical units. The design process is impacted by a set of constraints as well as technological information (i. e. the logic elements and physical units used for the design).

Environmental electromagnetic pollution has drastically increased over the last decades. The omnipresence of communication systems, various electronic appliances and the use of ever increasing frequencies, all contribute to a noisy electromagnetic environment which acts detrimentally on sensitive electronic equipment. Integrated circuits must be able to operate satisfactorily while cohabiting harmoniously in the same appliance, and not generate intolerable levels of electromagnetic emission, while maintaining a sound immunity to potential electromagnetic disturbances: analog integrated circuits are in particular more easily disturbed than their digital counterparts, since they don't have the benefit of dealing with predefined levels ensuring an innate immunity to disturbances. The objective of the research domain presented in EMC of Analog Integrated Circuits is to improve the electromagnetic immunity of considered analog integrated circuits, so that they start to fail at relevantly higher conduction levels than before.

This is the first book to focus on designing run-time reconfigurable systems on FPGAs, in order to gain resource and power efficiency, as well as to improve speed. Case studies in partial reconfiguration guide readers through the FPGA jungle, straight toward a working system. The discussion of partial reconfiguration is comprehensive and practical, with models introduced together with methods to implement efficiently the corresponding systems. Coverage includes concepts for partial module integration and corresponding communication architectures, floorplanning of the on-FPGA resources, physical implementation aspects starting from constraining primitive placement and routing all the way down to the bitstream required to configure the FPGA, and verification of reconfigurable systems.