When it comes to learning digital system designs, hobbies and students have a lot of options, whether it is tampering with field-programable gate arrays or submission of chip for one Tiny tapeout run. But the same devices for analog design have been difficult to come. Certainly you can make analog circuit A simulator like Ltspice And test them against the principle. But nothing creates real analog circuit and measures their real, not theoretical, not behavior. The measurement is complex for analog designs as test equipment can greatly affect measurements.
To address this educational difference, A team under my leadership But Electrical Engineering Department of Columbia University created MosbiusA breadboard-friendly chip that you can think as a field-programable Transistor Array for analog designs.
As its name suggests, Mosabius is built around the metal-oxide-semiconductor transistor, which is divided in the middle N-Type and P-Type transistor. Since these are the building blocks of most analog integrated circuits today, designing with Mosabius provides experience that is directly relevant to create real chips.
Mosabius has 68 pins, 63 of which either connect with separate transistors or general analogs like subcurits like Present mirror And Op-Empi phase. Two other pins are used for positive and negative supply voltage.
Mosbius chip (top left) contains all transistors required for multiple analog systems. A printed circuit board (middle) is wired to provide other essential components mounted on a breadboard, discontent resistors and capacitors (bottom). A raspberry pick pico (below right) is used to program Mosabius.James provost
The remaining three pin are used for programming an underlying switch matrix. You Be able to do Make a circuit with mosabius by connecting the pin to the outer wires. But switch matrix is easy to use. It can connect either of the 65 transistors, subcutors and voltage pin with one or more than 10 internal buses. The matrix is programmed by clocking in a simple stream of 650 bits – a bit for each possible connection between the bus and the pin.
We program using Mosabius matrix Raspberry pick pico A Python Script that replaces a simple json Text file in the desired bitstreamIf you want, however, you can use any 3.3-volt microcontroller that supports the python.
Mosbius runs on 2.5 V. Printed Circuit Board is used to connect PIN Solderless 830-contact breadboard Shifts the 3.3 V down of the pico while programming matrix. PCB is also included Partiality And over-voltage-protection circuit.
How are integrated circuit components different from discrepant components?
As Mosabius only has a transistor, circuit elements such as resistance and capacitors are wired externally as the holes components are inserted into the breadboard. You may think that using these external components will produce an impregnable container of an actual analog IC’s behavior, with on-chip resistors and capacitors manufactured from silicon rather than a metal film or ceramic material.
But at the speed of the signal below about a mHz, the real issue is that these are external components Excessive accurate. (Above 1 MHz, things like stray tier of breadboard begin to become an issue.) Even through a cheap-hole resistor will have a real resistance that occurs within 5 to 10 percent of the value, and 1 percent is common through accuracy with accuracy. Conversely, integrated components can easily vary from their nominal value to 30 percent.
As a result, the actual analog circuit is to be made with a large amount of internal margin. Developing skills to do this depends on understanding what is happening at different points within the circuit, as the input signals and component values are different. And this requires the measurement of the real world.
The “Aha” moment to see your circuit will last long after the equations are forgotten after coming to life.
In a fake circuit, you can click on any node and read any parameter without affecting the behavior of the circuit in any way. With Mosbius, you can likewise reach almost every node in a circuit, but now you can face the reality that can change the behavior of the wiring circuit to make the test to make measurements. It is important for anyone to find out the most elegant way to measure that he is expecting his ideas to be seen committed to silicon. “Aha” comes to see your circuit Life will last long after equations for life And the analysis is forgotten
The ability of Mosabius to allow people to roam inside the courage of an integrated circuit design takes inspiration from the three Fives disconnected timer kit, which uses discretionary components to re -create the functioning of one of the most popular integrated circuits of all time, 555555555555555. You can definitely do it. Use Mosbius to recreate 555Also many other performance circuits, “Hello World!” Of hardware, A blinking LED,
Metal-oxide transistors and commonly used subcuts are connected to most pins of Mosabius chip. They can be wired internal together using a set of buses programmed using a 650-bit stream from a microcontroller. James provost
The origin of Mosbius was severe: while preparing to prepare a set of students’ IC projects, we realized that we have space to squeeze another chip in the batch if we can complete the shipping deadline. Six weeks later, Mosbius left for production!
Overall from this limited run -150 chips – we are providing the Mosbius kit at a nominal price of US $ 150 (subject to change and simply to fix our costs), which are interested in bringing other teachers to their laboratories. We are also working on a revised version. Mosabius can be used to create circuits that are in complexity from people appropriate for graduation for graduate level projects. Website There is a complete set of tutorial and A Laboratory experiment manual Ready to go. If you are interested in getting a kit, you can Contact me through the site,
I think we have only a small number of kits available – we are all after the university department, not a semiconductor manufacturer – but we want to make Mosbius more widely available for both teachers and enthusiasts in the future. The best way to do this is to contact me, because strong demand is something we can present to a commercial partner!
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