ECE334 — Digital Electronics

Welcome to the laboratory component of ECE334. Over the term you will move from the equations and timing diagrams of the lecture hall into the hands-on craft of designing, simulating, and laying out real CMOS circuits — building and characterizing inverters, logic gates, a flip-flop, and a 6T SRAM cell on the open-source SKY130 process.

Start here

➡️ Setting up your lab environment — install Docker, download the workbench, and launch the EDA desktop in your browser. New to the tools or the command line? This guide assumes no prior experience.

The toolchain

Tool	What it does for you
XSchem	Draw schematics and launch simulations
ngspice	The SPICE simulator that computes how your circuit behaves
Magic	Draw the physical layout (the actual mask geometry)
Netgen	Check that your layout matches your schematic (LVS)

You install just one program — Docker — which provides a ready-made container with every tool, the SKY130 technology, and all settings inside it.

The labs

Lab	What you will explore
Lab 0 — XSchem & Magic intro	Get comfortable with the tools, gently and without marks
Lab 1 — Basic SPICE	RC circuit, device-parameter extraction, the CMOS inverter, a pulse generator
Lab 2 — NAND layout, LVS, PEX	Layout → DRC → LVS → post-layout simulation with parasitics
Lab 3 — Digital circuits	Timing of complex gates and a transmission-gate D flip-flop
Lab 4 — DFF & 6T SRAM	Characterize the flip-flop and design a 6T SRAM cell

Keep the XSchem and Magic cheatsheets open in a tab while you work.