Who

Carsten Wulff carsten@wulff.no

Why

Many years ago I made a compiler, and a state-of-the-art compiled ADC in 28 nm FDSOI, described in A Compiled 9-bit 20-MS/s 3.5-fJ/conv.step SAR ADC in 28-nm FDSOI for Bluetooth Low Energy Receivers. Since then, I’ve ported the ADC to multiple closed PDKs (22 nm FDSOI, 22 nm, 28 nm, 55 nm, 65 nm and 130nm). Finally, there is an open source port to skywater 130nm!

How

Made with ciccreator and cicpy.

The sources for the ADC are

cic
├── ip.json                      # Object file, describes the object hierarchy of the circuits in the SAR
├── ip.spi                       # Spice file, describes the connectivity 
├── capacitor.json               # Object file for capacitors
├── dmos_sky130nm_core.json      # Object file for transistors
└── sky130.tech                  # Technology file for Skywater 130 nm

I’ve also made a video that could be worth a look

What

Compiling ADC

The SAR is pre-compiled, so you don’t really need to compile it. The compiled files are in the design/ directory, so if all you want is to simulate on a SAR, then design/SUN_SAR9B_SKY130NM.spice should suffice.

To compile the ADC you need

• Compiler ciccreator
• Transpiler cicpy

and you need to modify the Makefile to point to the right installation of cic and cic.py

Then you can do

cd work
make ip

Running simulation

Seems like ngspice > 37 is necessary to run the SAR.

You need cicsim to run the simulations.

If you think everything is installed, then try

cd sim/SAR9B
make test 

Testbenches

Key parameters

Results

TODO

• LVS only works with a flat hierarchy
• Caps in SARBSSW are a bit wide
• Add walden FOM extraction