vlsi overview

7/30/2019 VLSI Overview

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What is VLSI

and Why You Should Care

Dr. Joseph Elias

Adjunct Faculty, ECE Department

Modeling MTS, Cypress Semiconductor


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What is this?Whatever it is, looks simple.


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WELL, IT GETS SLIGHTLY MORE COMPLICATEDWHAT IS THIS? SEE ANY ODDITY?


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STILL NOT CLEAR?CANT SEE THE FOREST FROM THE TREES?


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NOW?


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NOW?

65nm SRAM memory cell


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Who am I?

Graduated from UK, 1989, BSEE

Electro-magnetics, EMC, one laser class

No hard-core semiconductor class

Masters, Ph.D., Rice University

Laser interaction with semiconductors

Semiconductor research with Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments, 1995-2000

Cypress Semiconductor, 2000-present UK, 2000-present

I was sitting in your seat 15-20 years ago

I thought I was going to be a laser / EM engineer


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But Ive heard the class is hard.. EE584 is taught as a segue to the real world

We use industry-standard tools Class work is encouraged to be done at Cypress

Job prospects from recent students: Cypress has hired 19 (16 full time, 3 co-ops)

TI, Intel, Cisco, Cadence, Silicon Valley start-ups

These are high-paying, cutting-edge companies

Hard classes are relative to your expectations

Your competition: thousands of EE grads each year

Are you going to settle for lower echelon jobs?

But can I do the work? Yes, if you like devices, circuits, programming,

But I can get a good paying jobs w/o much effort Chicken and egg


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What is expected from an engineer? Hours:

8am 6pm (nominally) 7am12am (sometimes)

Skills:

Typing Speaking

Reading

Programming (SKILL, Perl, Ruby, Shell, XL, )

Flexibility (try new things)

Paying attention, energy, enthusiasm

Playing well with others

List is independent of your specialty


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What can VLSI do for me?

Jobs

Industry is cyclical, but drives economy

Grad school

New technologies to replace Silicon needed

VLSI can lead you to: West Coast (OR, CA)

East Coast (NY, MA, NJ, NC)

Midwest (IL, MN) Southwest (TX, AZ)

International (India, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, England,Japan, Taiwan, China)


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What do you learn/use in VLSI?

Physics

Chemistry

Software

Presentations Documentation

What is important in order to get a job

FALL EE584 VLSI INTRO MWF 9am SPRING EE589 ADVANCED VLSI MWF 9am


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BACKUP


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What are possible jobs I could do? Software

Web interfaces: financials, data mining

Scripts to automate manual tasks

Hardware

Production : large volumes (hundreds millions) Engineering : small volumes (one, two, ten)

Writing

Documentation of what you just did

Simple, yet hard to accomplish Speaking

Management, communicate effectively

Believable, trustworthy


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What is a semiconductor?

Small switch

Put lots of them together, you get a chip

Used in

Cell phones

Computers

Toasters

Cars

Everything


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How much does an engineer get paid? 2001 IEEE Salary Survey: Median $93k (n=9,700)

Experience level

This is not a starting salary

Typically takes 10 years work experience

Education level

Ph.D. = Master + (3 to 5)

Master = Bachelor + (3 to 5)


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Recent Trends

Recession

Recession

BoomBoomBoom

Boom

Recession

Recession

Boom


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How Many Chips?

Wafers (Millions) vs. Time

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Year-Quarter

10 MILLION WAFERS * ~500 CHIPS / WAFER = 5 BILLION CHIPS / QUARTER

EACH CHIP $0.50 $50


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Historical Trends


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Who Hires VLSI-Types?

Semiconductor companies Fab-less Design Houses

2001

Rank Company

2001

Sales

1 Intel 23.5

2 ST Micro 6.4

3 Toshiba 6.1

4 TI 6.0

5 Samsung 5.2

6 Motorola 4.8

7 NEC 4.8

8 Infineon 4.69 Philips 4.4

10 AMD 3.9

2001

Rank Company

2001

Sales

1 Qualcomm 1.24

2 Nvidia 1.21

3 Xilinx 1.15

4 Via 1.01

5 Broadcom 0.96

6 Altera 0.84

7 Cirrus Logic 0.53

8 ATI Techn 0.529 Media Tek 0.45

10 QLogic 0.36


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Size, Speed Trends

Present solutions will no longer work in 2005

Scale: human hair 100,000 nm, red blood cell 5,000nm

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