IITM BS Digital IC Design (EE5102): Syllabus and Tips

Digital IC Design (EE5102) is a 4 credit department elective at the degree level of the IITM BS Electronic Systems programme. It teaches digital circuits at the transistor level: the CMOS inverter, gate delay and power, sizing gates for speed, flip-flop timing, and fast adders and multipliers. The handbook lists no prerequisite. It is one of the three courses in the Minor in VLSI Design and Testing.

The syllabus names Prof. Janakiraman Viraraghavan, Electrical Engineering Department, IIT Madras, as the instructor. The Sep 2025 syllabus and the ES handbook agree on the code, credits and level.

What the course aims for

The syllabus calls this the basic digital circuit design course for anyone heading into VLSI. By the end, you should be able to:

• measure the main delay figures of a standard cell
• work out dynamic and leakage power in a circuit
• design a circuit that meets a speed target
• find the critical path of a combinational block
• turn that block into a pipelined circuit
• calculate the highest safe clock frequency

What you learn in Digital IC Design

The syllabus lists 12 modules without week numbers. The handbook says a 4 credit course runs for 12 weeks, so about one module a week is a fair plan. The modules group into four parts.

1. Modules 1 to 3: the inverter. How a CMOS inverter is built and its voltage transfer curve. Resistance, capacitance and how fast the output switches. Dynamic, short circuit and leakage power, and how stacking transistors cuts leakage.
2. Modules 4 to 7: gates and sizing. Designing combinational gates and their capacitance. The logical effort method (parasitic delay, logical effort, electrical effort) for estimating delay. Sizing gates and adding buffers, then skewed gates, asymmetric gates and ratioed logic.
3. Modules 8 to 10: dynamic logic and timing. Dynamic gates and domino logic, and static timing analysis. Sequential circuits with feedback, and static and dynamic flip-flops. Measuring setup and hold time, and timing a system built from latches or flip-flops.
4. Modules 11 and 12: arithmetic circuits. Adders (mirror, carry skip, carry select, square root) and multipliers for signed and unsigned numbers, including the carry save multiplier.

The textbooks are "Digital Integrated Circuits" by Rabaey, Chandrakasan and Nikolic (2nd edition), and "CMOS VLSI Design" by Weste, Harris and Banerjee (3rd edition). The syllabus also points to Prof. Vinita Vasudevan's lecture notes on adders and multipliers.

How the course is assessed

The syllabus does not describe grading. The handbook's general pattern for ES courses is weekly online assignments, two in-person quizzes and an in-person end term exam, with details in each course's grading document.

Where it counts

• Department elective. It is on the list of 8 department electives. ES students take 5 of them, worth 20 credits. See ES degree level courses.
• VLSI minor. With Electronic Testing and Measurement and Semiconductor Devices and VLSI Technology, it makes up the Minor in VLSI Design and Testing. Minor credits count inside the 142 credits of the BS degree.
• For Data Science students. The DS handbook also lists this course in the Digital Design minor, a minor it offers to DS students. The ES handbook does not list that minor.

Who finds it hard and how to prepare

The logical effort method and timing analysis are where most students slow down. The maths is simple, but there are many small steps, and one wrong capacitance ratio ruins the answer. Students who have forgotten MOSFET basics also struggle in the first three modules.

• Revise MOSFET current and voltage behaviour. Analog Circuits and Semiconductor Devices and VLSI Technology both cover it.
• Revise flip-flops from Digital Systems and timing analysis from Digital System Design.
• Solve logical effort problems by hand until the steps become routine. The Weste and Harris textbook covers this method in detail.
• Draw every circuit with transistor sizes marked. Many mistakes come from mixing up NMOS and PMOS widths.

What to take before and after

Before: Digital Systems and Digital System Design from the earlier levels. Alongside: Semiconductor Devices and VLSI Technology, which explains the devices you size here, and Electronic Testing and Measurement, the third minor course.

Common questions

Do I need to write Verilog in this course?

The syllabus does not mention Verilog or any hardware language. The work is at the transistor and gate level: delay, power, sizing and timing.

Can I count Digital IC Design as an elective and toward the minor at once?

The ES handbook says minor credits count within the 142 credits of the degree, not on top of them. So the course should fill a department elective slot and count for the minor. The handbook does not say this in exact words, so confirm with support.

Is Digital IC Design the same as Digital System Design?

No. Digital System Design (EE2103) is a diploma course on building larger systems with Verilog and FPGAs. Digital IC Design works one level lower, on the transistors inside each gate.