EECS 427 -- VLSI Design I

EECS 427 (VLSI I) is a time consuming class. In fact, it is often referred to as the MOST time consuming class in the entire department. But people still take it, and they walk away proud of the most grueling four credits they've ever earned.

While this page is not too informative to those not intimately familiar with this class, the general public will gain a little insight by recognizing the following: the picture below is of a little computer which my group designed and built during the course of the semester. It is capable of obtaining status about 16 elevators in a 64 story building and dispatching them in the most efficient way possible. The lower-right block of the graphic (the datapath) was designed and painstakiningly drawn by hand over a period of about six weeks. The tall block on the left of the chip was synthesized from thousands of lines of Verilog code. Eventually, "all-nighters" gave way to near all-weekers. The functionality of the chip was demonstrated to the professor the morning of April 24th, 1999. 
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Technical information and write-up

I couldn't have survived without my group members:

  • Jennifer Hon
  • K. Trisha Chang
  • Brian Raf
  • Sabrina Shukri
VLSI Group Photo VLSI Group Photo

Special thanks to...
  • Michael McCorquodale, with whom a brief chat occured that ended up being the sole reason we (and eventually the rest of groups) were able to LVS our core
  • Hahn Kim, Brian's and my roommate who put up with an empty apartment (and less frequent trips for groceries) for most of the term.
  • The Eta Kappa Nu donut stand for keeping plenty of Snapple and candy in stock.
In addition to the image below, I've made several other pictures of my chip:
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