The Dialmemo Chip

Most of the theoretical and practical concepts in the ASIC Design Laboratory are illustrated by means of the vehicle system called the dialmemo. Besides, the dialmemo is actually designed by the students down to the gate level. The idea to use this system for teaching ASIC design originates from the Technical University of Delft. However, the teaching material has been developed almost entirely by the local staff in Twente.

As can be seen from the picture above, the dialmemo is a device that interacts with a telephone keyboard on one side and generates a sound signal at the other side that can be reproduced by a loudspeaker. The user can compose a telephone number on the keyboard and press the "*" key to activate the production of tones that correspond with the number. Keeping the loudspeaker against a telephone microphone should result in the number being dialed. The dialmemo also has the possibility of storing a second "hidden" number (using the "store" key which in practice may be less visible than on the keyboard in the picture)  and generate the tones associated with that number using the "#" key. The dialmemo is a gadget that a company could give away to its clients (the hidden number can then be used for the company's own number).

Due to time constraints, the students are given the first level partitioning of the system into the following entities:

  1. an entity to scan the keyboard by sending out signals on the row wires and observing the signals received on the column wires;
  2. an entity that processes the detected keys and takes care of storage and control;
  3. an entity that generates the tones by digitally producing approximations of sine waves of appropriate frequencies that are later converted to  analog signals by means of D/A converters.
After some 7 preparatory sessions of 4 hours each in which the students become familiar with VHDL itself, its use in simulation and synthesis, and perform some system-level design of the D/A converters as well, students design the dialmemo  by means of VHDL synthesis in 5 more sessions.
Below the layout of the chip designed by students in the fall of 1997 and taped out by Hans Snijders is shown.  For the actual fabrication, the services of  Europractice  have been used. The experienced reader should see that the realization uses standard cells except for the D/A converters on the lower right.


 

The packaged chips function correctly and are currently used for the testing sessions of the ASIC Design Laboratory. In the newest editions of the laboratory, student designs are directly mapped on a demonstrator containing an FPGA.

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Last update on: Sun Jan 28 00:03:21 CET 2018 by Sabih Gerez.