Introduction to Digital Circuits : RTL to GDS-II Design Flow

This presentation is a structured introduction to digital circuit design and the complete RTL-to-GDS-II implementation flow, prepared as educational and training material by Kavaiya Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. (Semiconductor Division). It traces the full engineering lifecycle of a digital chip, from Boolean logic and CMOS digital abstraction through to verified silicon tape-out.

The front-end portion covers digital abstraction and noise margins, binary and fixed-point arithmetic, Boolean algebra and logic minimisation, combinational and sequential logic, finite state machines, adders and datapath elements, setup/hold timing, pipelining, and clock-domain-crossing analysis. It then develops synthesizable RTL coding in Verilog/SystemVerilog — coding discipline, latch avoidance and RTL quality checks — alongside a verification methodology spanning self-checking testbenches, coverage metrics, assertions, formal verification and UVM.

The back-end portion follows physical implementation and sign-off: logic synthesis, standard-cell library views, SDC constraints, static timing analysis, multi-mode multi-corner (MMMC) analysis, design-for-testability and scan, floorplanning, power delivery networks, placement, clock tree synthesis, routing, parasitic extraction, signal integrity, IR-drop and electromigration, physical verification (DRC/LVS/ERC), low-power design with UPF, engineering change orders, and GDS-II tape-out. It concludes with fabrication, wafer sort and packaging, post-silicon bring-up, reliability qualification, open-source and commercial EDA toolchains, a worked PWM-controller case study, and a learning roadmap from student to semiconductor engineer.

The material is intended for students, interns, faculty and trainees for learning, academic understanding, technical awareness and skill development in semiconductor design.