{"title":"On UVM Reliability in Mixed-Signal Verification","authors":"Wilmer Ramirez, H. Gómez, E. Roa","doi":"10.1109/LASCAS.2019.8667543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LASCAS.2019.8667543","url":null,"abstract":"During the last decade, Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) has become a popular standard test methodology for verification of intellectual property (VIP) within digital and mixed-signal systems. UVM prominent features include stimulus automation, I/O checking and code reuse. This paper analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of UVM along with measurements of reliability using a 32-bit LPDDR3 memory interface and a bandgap voltage reference. Simulation results indicate that reliability is limited by complexity of the circuit under test and proper UVM setup to get considerable analog simulation coverage. For analog cases, UVM-AMS can render low reliability considering that a common practice in analog design is creating multiple testbenches according to the function/domain tested. VIP by itself should be used as a complement to traditional verification practices even when assuming access to a fully detailed UVM-AMS VIP.","PeriodicalId":142430,"journal":{"name":"2019 IEEE 10th Latin American Symposium on Circuits & Systems (LASCAS)","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116573034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
L. C. Moreira, J. F. Neto, Walter Silva Oliveira, Thiago Ferauche, Guilherme Apolinario Silva Novaes
{"title":"A Pseudo-Raised Cosine IR-UWB pulse generator with adaptive PSD using 130nm CMOS process","authors":"L. C. Moreira, J. F. Neto, Walter Silva Oliveira, Thiago Ferauche, Guilherme Apolinario Silva Novaes","doi":"10.1109/LASCAS.2019.8667582","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LASCAS.2019.8667582","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents the design of a Pseudo-Raised Cosine Impulse Radio Ultra-Wide Band (IR-UWB) pulse generator with adaptive PSD (Power Spectrum Density) that produces pulse shaping just altering the number of oscillations and amplitude. The complete pulse generator circuit is composed of 11 blocks of edge combiner stages implemented with high impedance circuits each, a digital control block, and a filter. This circuit can generate from four to eleven oscillations per clock edge to compose a PRC (Pseudo-Raised Cosine) at the output. The proposed circuit operates at about 10.3 GHz and generates three basic pulses, with a range of 10, 20 and 30 mV and four other amplitude combinations. The post-layout simulations were performed using the Cadence Spectrum/Virtuoso, and the dynamic energy varied from 5.02 fJ with four oscillations to 16.11 fJ with eleven oscillations per pulse, respectively. Thus, the maximum PSD peak is −60 dBm, the minimum is −72 dBm with a voltage supply of 1.2 V. Finally, the Pulse Repetition Frequency (PRF) of 100 MHz and the size of the main chip occupies an area of 0.042 mm2 (without pads).","PeriodicalId":142430,"journal":{"name":"2019 IEEE 10th Latin American Symposium on Circuits & Systems (LASCAS)","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130480873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mateus Leme, L. Braatz, D. Palomino, L. Agostini, M. Porto
{"title":"Low-Power and High-Throughput Approximate 4×4 DCT Hardware Architecture","authors":"Mateus Leme, L. Braatz, D. Palomino, L. Agostini, M. Porto","doi":"10.1109/LASCAS.2019.8667581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LASCAS.2019.8667581","url":null,"abstract":"Mobile devices with multimedia processing capabilities are becoming more and more present, despite their energy restrictions. On the other hand, multimedia applications are very demanding tasks, which have a negative impact on the battery lifetime of mobile phones. Nonetheless, video encoding, one of the most demanding multimedia applications, can benefit from approximate computing to save energy. This paper proposes an approximate 4×4 Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) hardware architecture using the imprecise Lower Part-OR Adder (LOA). The imprecise operators, such as LOA, are one of many approaches to approximate computing. This approximate hardware architecture is developed with different imprecision levels. The presented approximate 4×4 DCT hardware architecture synthesis results show area reduction up to 13.6%, power savings up to 23% and throughput increase up to 26.45% while having a negligible to small BD-Rate impact.","PeriodicalId":142430,"journal":{"name":"2019 IEEE 10th Latin American Symposium on Circuits & Systems (LASCAS)","volume":"42 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130671339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On-Chip Solar Energy Harvesting System Using Substrate Diode PV Cell and Fractional Open Circuit Voltage MPPT Implementation","authors":"D. Rodriguez, Carlos Bernal, G. Serrano","doi":"10.1109/LASCAS.2019.8667566","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LASCAS.2019.8667566","url":null,"abstract":"This work presents a power management architecture for an On-Chip solar energy harvesting system applied to low power applications. A functional Power Management Circuit with MPPT was designed using a 0.13 µm CMOS technology. The system provides an output voltage of 1.2 V and supply a maximum current of 13.7µA by using just one external inductor. The proposed fractional open circuit voltage MPPT, along with the DC/DC converter controller, allows the system to achieve efficiencies of up to 81%. Such high efficiency was achieved via a self synchronize diode and a negative level shifter reducing drastically the power losses.","PeriodicalId":142430,"journal":{"name":"2019 IEEE 10th Latin American Symposium on Circuits & Systems (LASCAS)","volume":"EMC-15 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121008651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Low-Area Direct Memory Access Controller Architecture for a RISC-V Based Low-Power Microcontroller","authors":"Hanssel Morales, Ckristian Duran, E. Roa","doi":"10.1109/LASCAS.2019.8667579","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LASCAS.2019.8667579","url":null,"abstract":"In this work, we present a low area DMA controller that enables low-cost SoCs where subsystems need constant memory access. Small interfaces and a unique FIFO handling read/write transactions are fundamental blocks in this design. As proof of concept, the testing system also includes a RISC-V RV32IM processor, a USB 1.1/2.0 PHY and a QSPI interface. We implemented a whole microcontroller using a TSMC 0.18μm technology node, where the DMA occupies 4.2% of the total area. The results show a total DMA area of 1997 gates using 4 information channels, which is 75.3% smaller area in comparison with recent low-area DMAs.","PeriodicalId":142430,"journal":{"name":"2019 IEEE 10th Latin American Symposium on Circuits & Systems (LASCAS)","volume":"75 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123598870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}