Schedule

 
The following table gives the course schedule for Stanford EE273 taught during Autumn Quarter 1998. Each row summarizes the contents of one lecture. Also listed are the reading assignments that should be completed before each lecture and homework assignments that reinforce the lecture material.
 
Lecture
Date
Topic
Reading
   Homework 
1 23 Sep Introduction to Digital Systems Engineering: Overview of signaling, power distribution, timing, and noise issues.  Technology trends in digital systems.
 1
HW1:  1-1, 1-5, 1-9 
2 28 Sep Wires:  Electrical models of wires.  Lossless transmission line model.  Termination and reflections. The Telegrapher's equation.  TDR demonstration. 
 3.1 through 3.3.3 
    None 
3 30 Sep More on wires:  Lossy transmission lines.  Skin effect resistance and dielectric absorption.  Multidrop buses.  Balanced lines.  Common and differential mode analysis. 
3.3.4 through 3.5.2
 HW2:  3-2, 3-6, 3-7, 3-16 
(SPICE all problems)
4 05 Oct Wire Wrapup: modeling and analysis of wires. Use of the TDR.
3.6 and 3.7
None
5 07 Oct Noise: Overview of noise sources. Power supply noise. Crosstalk - capacitive lines - coupled transmission lines - even and odd mode deriviation - signal return crosstalk.
 6.1 through 6.3
 HW3: 6-3, 6-6, 6-7, 6-13,  6-16
6 12 Oct More on noise: intersymbol interference, alpha particles, thermal and shot noise, parameter variations.  Managing noise.  Noise budgets and BER.
 6.4 through 6.6
 None
7 14 Oct Signaling: A quick comparison. Transmission modes, receiver operation - references and noise cancellation, termination methods. Differential signaling.
7.1 and 7.3
 HW4: 7-2, 7-7, 7-8
8 19 Oct More Signaling: Signaling over capacitive lines.  Signaling over inductive lines.  Signal encoding.
7.4 and 7.5
 None
9 21 Oct Advanced Signaling. Simultaneous bidirectional signaling. Driving lossy RC lines.  Equalization for lossy LRC lines.  DC balanced codes.
 8.1 through 8.4
 None 
Midterm 26 Oct Midterm in the evening, location TBD, no class on this day
 None
 None
10 28 Oct Timing: Signals, values, and events. Clock domains. Timing uncertainty: skew and jitter. Synchronous timing and pipeline timing conventions. 9.1 through 9.5 HW5: Crosstalk to RC lines, 8-2, 9-2, 9-3
11 02 Nov Closed-loop timing:  Measuring and canceling skew.  A simple timing loop.  Timing loop components.  Bundled closed-loop timing.  Per-line closed-loop timing.
 9.6.1 through 9.6.5
None
12 04 Nov Clock distribution:  off-chip distribution: clock trees, phase-locked distribution, salphasic distribution.  On-chip distribution: trees, meshes, jitter calculations.
 9.7
 HW6: 9-6 (SPICE it), clock dist problem w/ spice
13 09 Nov  The synchronization problem:  why synchronize, metastability and synchronization failure, calculating failure probability, common synchronizer pitfalls, synchronization hierarchy.
 10.1 and 10.2
 None
14 11 Nov Synchronizer design: brute-force synchronizer; mesochronous syncrhonizers: two-register synchronizer, FIFO synchronizer; plesiochronous synchronization, dealing with data-rate mismatch, arbitrary periodic synchronization, the clock predictor.
 10.3
 Project assigned
15 16 Nov Asynchronous design:  signaling conventions, stoppable clocks, trajectory-map synthesis.  10.4  None
16 18 Nov Off-Chip Power Distribution: the power distribution problem, local loads and signal loads, a typical distribution network.  Bypass capacitors.  Regulators: shunt regulators, series regulators, switching regulators.  5.1, 5.2, and 5.5  None
17 23 Nov  On-Chip Power distribution: current-profile of digital functions, IR drops, fraction of metal coverage, deliberate and symbiotic bypass capacitance, local regulation.  5.3  None
18 25 Nov  Slack 
None
 None
19 30 Nov  Project presentations
None
 project due
20 02 Dec  Project presentations
None
 project due
Final 10 Dec  8:30AM-10:30AM
None
 None