Work in progress — Development of a linear integrated circuits course focused on design under realistic trade-off conditions

At the Electronics Department of the University of Buenos Aires it is being developed a new introductory course on linear electronic circuits where the students will not only learn how to analyze these circuits, but will also synthesize an Operational Amplifier (OPAMP) under the scope of realistic trade-off conditions. The outcome circuits will be fabricated through MOSIS university program. At the proposed course the whole OPAMP is gradually designed through three laboratory assignments, in which different circuit stages of the OPAMP are designed and simulated. The last step of the learning process is a final project where the students have to compare the performance of the OPAMP they designed with that of similar commercial OPAMPs. This new approach is only possible thanks to a strong collaboration with the Allegro Microsystems Design Center at Buenos Aires, which has many years of experience on the field of analog microelectronics design. This paper presents a brief summary on how this idea was conceived, how the University teaching staff is in tight collaboration with Allegro´s engineers, the organization of the proposed course and the expected results.