Messages
The example solutions for the 2024 exam as well as the exam text are now available.
A student discovered that the solution of exercise 2.4 in the compendium is wrong, in particular the derivation of the capacitors... Challenge for everybody: discover the error(s). I will correct this in a next edition, but too late before the exam.
I have to appologize, but with the preparation of the exam and other high priority deadlines it looks very much like you will not get the results for lab 3 before the exam. Sorry for that!
Some questions have been sendt to me per e-mail of individual students. I repeat them here with the answers so that everybody gets them and add some info of my own.
1) A new version of the compendium (0.15) is available on the webpage. After questions in the Q&A session I added a table in chapter 9 that links the transistor capacitors with the general transconductance amplifier model in chapter 5. Have a look!
2) A student pointed out that the exam of 2023 had not bbeen available on the course page. that is now updated. However, the individual tasks have already been inserted into the exercises in the compendium.
3) Will the lecture slides be available at the exam? Yes, both the compendium and a single PDF with all the slides will be electronically available on the machines at Silurveien.
4) Are written notes allowed? Yes, everything non-electronic, such as notes, books, print-outs etc.
Please download the latest edition of the compendium for today's paper exercise: new task A4.11.
Several groups have reported that the change in current in lab 3's task 1b during the discharge of the capacitor is impossible to measure, i.e. within the accuracy of the instruments and the noise in the data it just looks like the current is 100% unchanged for most of the discharge curve of the capacitor.
That may well be the case, in particular since we needed to change the value of the capacitance for the lab.
So if that is so, it is IMOPRTANT that you document in your report how you tried to compute the current and the change in current, show the data you used and the (noisy) results you have gotten, and describe why these results are not reliable enough to conclude that there is a change in current, and rather seem to indicate no change or too small a change to be detectable.
A new version of lab 3 has also been uploaded to the course webpage, that contains a link to the compendium regarding "output resistance".
As announced, the extra, non-mandatory task that can replace the original lab 2 task 1B) is now available with deadline 13-May 10:15. Mainly intended for those groups affected by a misunderstanding that caused 0 or close to 0 points for this task 1B), but available for anyone.
Downloadable here.
Important: if you choose to submit this extra assignment in Devilry, your original score for lab 2 task 1B (worth a maximum of 5 out of 16 points for lab 2) will be replaced by the score you will get for this extra task, irrespective of which of the two scores is better!
Lab 3, task 1 updated:
Since we did not get the 1uF capacitors in the lab, the students used 390pF. Thus they were allowed to change the specs for C, and also on the resistor and target current for task 1 to get a good measurement with the speed limitation of the oscilloscope. IMPORTANT: choose the target current I and resistor R such that the target current I=V/R is the same that flows through the resistor at a voltage of V=1V!\\
For today's paper exercise, please download the newest version 0.13 of the compendium with new task A4.10.
We will have a very interesting guest lecture at the NANO group focusing on energy-efficient wireless microcontroller design for IoT this Thursday. Please feel free to join and also re-distribute to colleagues and students:
Lecturer: Frode M. Pedersen, Chief architect at Nordic Semiconductor ASA ( https://www.nordicsemi.com/ ),
Title of guest lecture: "Ultra low-power wireless microcontroller design"
When: Thursday May 2nd, at 10.15-12.00
Where: Lille Auditorium, Kristen Nygaards hus, Gaustadaleen 23 A, 0373 Oslo...
There has been a major misunderstanding between the TA and two groups regarding the second half of task 1 in lab 2. As a solution intended to be fair to everyone, I will offer everybody to replace task 1B in lab 2 worth 5 points out of 16 for the entire lab 2 with an extra task to be published this week. The task has been denominated 1B in the comments in the corrected lab only, not in the original task text, so check the comments in your corrected version! If you choose to upload an answer to that extra task on devilry, your previous score of task 1B will be replaced by the score for the extra task, also if the new score is lower! So I do not recommend or expect any other groups than the two in question to do this, but anyone is free to do so.
I just uploaded a new version of the compendium: a few updates in the analog section that we will discuss today in the lecture.
An update of the compendium has been uploaded.
I will in a moment (before 14:00) upload an update to lab 3 with some hints to avoid confusion with similar circuits that you had to work with in lab 2. In short: R_ON for a digital switch model that you had to derive in lab 2, is NOT the same as r_ds or more generally R_O or R_out of a current source that you work with in lab 3. Also, in task 2 it is really not necessary to include the pFET switch or the capacitor in the simulation to derive an I/V relationship of the current source (that you will need to derive r_ds or R_O).
Lab 3 has been available since yesterday under 'resources', but is now also linked up from the schedule and here.
Lab 2 is now ready for delivery via devilry.ifi.uio.no . Since this is a bit late I have extended the deadline until 23:59 tonight.
A small update to task 2 of lab 2 with more instructions through the menu of cadence to find 'initial conditions' and that you should use cell 'vpulse' for the step input.
Please download the newest edition before the paper exercise: inserted new tasks A4.1 and 4.2.
Please download the latest version of the compendium for tomorrow's paper exercise!
Check out https://devilry.ifi.uio.no/ for submission of lab 1 (deadline next week BEFORE the lecture on Monday!). You can also establish your work groups formally therein, so only one submission per group needs to be made. Workgroups across IN4170 and IN3170 are allowed, but not directly supported in Devilry. In that case you'll still have to make two identical (!) submissions, one in IN3170 and one in IN4170.
If you are the last person leaving the lab, please make sure that the door locks!
The text of Lab 1 has been corrected to describe what the GPIBexample.m function initially makes the waveform generator do: it puts out a square wave and you should show that square wave in task1. And then in task 2 you should change tha to a ramp and that's what you should show in task 2.
Download lab 1 again to see the version with this correction!
For at dere har tilgang til undervisningslab 5419 m? dere registreres p? nettskjema.
Beta utgaven 0.1 av 'Microelectronics Essentials' er n? tilgjengelig for nedlasting i pensumslisten.