Integrated Circuit Design

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Introduction
Most modern entertainment gadgets, equipment and tools incorporate integrated circuits
that perform some specific functions that make the entertainment experience fascinating
for users. From the simple toys for toddlers to the complex game studios in casinos,
hardware forms a major component of entertainment technology. With the advent of
integrated circuits, and subsequent development of CMOS (complementary oxide
semiconductor) technologies, there has been remarkable success in the number of
application specific integrated chips (ASIC) tailored for gaming and general
entertainment. And from programmable micro-controllers to field programmable gate
arrays (FPGAs), chips are common tools to both computer scientist and engineer

Integrated Circuit Design Flow
The process of chip design is very complex and its understating requires many years of
study and practical experience. From a digital integrated circuit design perspective, it
could be divided into different hierarchies as shown in Fig.3 where the problems are
examined at several different levels [6].


A CASE STUDY
For simplicity, let us imagine the design of a simple chip that would enable an addition of
player’s score during a video game. One vital component of that chip would be an
arithmetic logic unit (ALU). Many ALU have adder circuits inside. We would use the
design of a simple full adder to illustrate the design process discussed above. This is a
trivial design and in no way a representative of the level of work in state of the art digital
circuits used in computers, games, etc.