Education in the design of very large scale integrated (VLSI) digital circuits has reached a stage where undergraduate students in U.S. universities are routinely able to successfully design sophisticated circuits. The education of this same group of students in analog VLSI design principles is not at the same level of maturity due to factors such as the extra degrees of freedom involved in the analog design process. The increased complexity of analog VLSI design seriously interferes with the closure of the design test loop that is an important part of the digital VLSI educational process. This project offers a means to provide closure to this design-test loop in analog VLSI design by providing educators a laboratory style tutorial manual with accompanying VLSI circuit chip set that covers many important topics in analog design. This Analog CMOS VLSI Design Resource Kit will allow microsystems educators the ability to cover important analog design concepts in lecture and then immediately assign laboratory assignments based on this material. The resource kit, including chip set, will be designed to be completely accessible via INTERNET. The chip set will be designed so that fabrication may be handled by the NSF-supported fabrication service MOSIS. Dissemination of the resource kit will be aided by the Massachusetts Microelectronics Center.
