eegerferenc / cmos-555

LibreSilicon 1 um Technology clone of the well-known CMOS "triple-5"

CMOS-555

This Repository is for LibreSilicons's completely Open Source Timer IC "NE555" clone.

The Original "triple-5" chip is legendary. Once developed by the Swiss electronics engineer Hans R. Camenzind, working for Signetics, gets cloned by many different companies and is nowadays still in production and still a bestseller. While the first designs were build with Bipolar Junction Transistors (BJT), also a couple of clones are made in Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technologies.

This Chip here uses the LibreSilicon 1 µm CMOS-Technlogogy and contains two separted "555" on the same die - being acurate the Chip becomes functionaly similiar to the "7556".

Requirements

Lepton EDA

The Schematic for the CMOS-555 is done with the Schematic Entry program from Lepton-EDA - a GNU EDA tool clone with more active development than the original and the same License. On Debian-based Linux systems, you get lepton-schematic as part of the whole PCB tool suite Lepton-EDA by

apt-get install lepton-eda

as part of the whole PCB tool suite Lepton-EDA.

Spice

A very usefull kind-of "Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis" (SPICE), originaly from Berkley University is ngspice. Of course, this Open Source, general-purpose, analog electronic circuit simulator comes with Linux systems, e.g. on Debian-based systems with

apt-get install ngspice

Please make yourself familiar with Simulations using Spice.

Magic

Another software tool, which should be installed before usage, is Magic. Magic is Open Source, but not part of all Linux distributions (lacks on OpenSuse, Arch Linux etc). On Debian-based systems

apt-get install magic

works.

Documentation

Best Documentation about Analog Design and the "555" you'll find at Camenzind's Book Site. The Book is a great Textbook for analog Chip design; read it, study it, it is worth the time. For offline reading, you'll find the Download Link on the Book Site.

Of course, the "555" also has a Wikipedia Page.

Usage

Schematic

lepton-schematic Sources/geda/555_Wikimedia-Version.sch

Layout

magic -T scmos.tech Layout/magic/CMOS-555.mag
magic -T scmos.tech Layout/magic/CMOS-556.mag