[Education Corner] Tinkering with CMOS Circuits

P. Kinget

Tinkering with CMOS Circuits at the Lunch Table with MOSbius

[Education Corner]

in IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 72-78, Summer 2025

doi: 10.1109/MSSC.2025.3583537

Abstract: Experimental validation is a critical step in any engineering discipline and doing lab experiments is an essential part of the formation of an engineer. Creating relevant experiments to train integrated-circuit designers has become difficult due to the lack of appropriate components. We designed the MOSbius chip and adapter PCB so learners can perform circuit labs with MOS transistor topologies that are relevant to modern transistor-level IC design. With MOSbius, students can experiment with customized CMOS circuits early on – without the challenges, delays, and cost of designing a custom integrated circuit. Yet, MOSbius serves as a great steppingstone towards full custom IC design courses.

Fig: An overview of the MOSbius platform. Students design and realize transistor-level MOS circuits

using on-chip-style topologies and evaluate them experimentally.

Acknowledgment: Many thanks to the MOSbius crew of enthusiastic current and former students: Longyi Li, Yunfan Gao, Zhuo Chen, Petar Barac, Ray Xu, Hongzhe Jiang, Cade Gleekel, Nico de la Cruz, Rosnel Alejandro Leyva-Cortes, Yuechen He, Jingde Hu, Qizhe Wu, Jingrui Li, Xianglin Pu, Yuntao Guo, and Andrew Chon. Thanks to Apple, Inc. for fabrication funding through the Columbia ELEN E6350 VLSI Design Lab course. Thanks to Yannis Tsividis (Columbia), John Pigott (NXP), Babak Soltanian (Tayen.Ai), Jianxun Zhu (Analog Devices, Inc.), Jared Zerbe (Apple), Eric Smith (Apple), Doug Mercer (ADI), and many others for engaging discussions and sharing of ideas.