Instructor

Pierluigi Nuzzo

Office hours: Tu 5:00-6:00 pm or by appointment, 567 Cory

Teaching Team

Contact: eecs144-gsi@lists.berkeley.edu

• Matthew Low, GSI, Discussion

  • Office hours: TBD

• Yifeng Xiao, GSI, Lab

  • Office hours: TBD

• Evan Wong, Tutor

  • Office hours: We 4:00-5:00 pm, Cory 529

Logistics

Lectures: TuTh 3:30-5:00 pm, Cory 540AB

Discussion: Fr 10:00-11:00 am, Cory 540AB

Lab:     Th 10:00 am-12:00 pm, Cory 140

bCourses:   bCourse Link 

Description

This course is an introduction to design automation, concerned with rigorous methods and tools for the modeling, design, and analysis of complex engineered systems. Topics include design flows, discrete and continuous modeling, and fundamental synthesis, verification, and simulation algorithms. Integrated circuit design and electronic design automation (EDA) will be a central theme, but the course material has applications to several areas in EECS and beyond, including embedded and cyber-physical systems, software engineering, artificial intelligence, control systems, robotics, and multi-physics systems. Based on time and interests, we will also cover other current research topics such as design automation for chiplet-based electronic systems, design automation for domain-specific computing systems, design automation for secure and trusted hardware, design automation for trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI) systems, AI-augmented design methods. Laboratory assignments and a class project will expose students to state-of-the-art languages and tools. 

Course Topics (Subject to Change)

• Introduction:

  • Design flows and methodologies: The Register Transfer Level (RTL) design flow; analog and mixed-signal design; platform-based design.

  • Application examples: Integrated circuits, cyber-physical systems, biosystems, nanosystems.

• Discrete Modeling:

  • Digital integrated circuits; Boolean algebra; Logic synthesis and optimization. 

  • Boolean reasoning engines: Boolean satisfiability (SAT), Binary Decision Diagrams. 

  • Digital circuit simulation; Simulation-based verification or design verification (DV).  

  • Formal verification (FV): Equivalence checking, reachability analysis, sequential equivalence checking, model checking.

  • Timing analysis; Retiming.

  • Testing and reliability.

  • Physical design: Placement and routing.

• Continuous Modeling:

  • Analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits; Simulation of continuous systems; Newton-Raphson algorithm.

  • Numerical solution of nonlinear equations; Steady-state analysis; Numerical solution of differential algebraic equations (DAE); Transient analysis.

• Advanced Topics (see Description)