Today, as cars continue to develop in the direction of intelligence, the value of chips is increasingly apparent. According to McKinsey's data, it is estimated that the semiconductor scale of only L3 and above high-level autonomous vehicle in China will reach 13 billion dollars in 2030. According to the different application fields of semiconductors in smart cars, Open Source Securities divides semiconductors into computing and control chips, memory chips, sensor chips, communication chips, energy supply chips, etc.
The process of chip manufacturing is like building a house with Lego. First, the wafer is used as the foundation, and then the chip manufacturing process is stacked layer by layer to produce the necessary IC chips (these will be introduced later). However, it is useless to have strong manufacturing capacity without design drawings. Therefore, the role of architects is very important. But who is the architect in IC design? Next, this paper will introduce the IC design.
In the IC production process, most of the ICs are planned and designed by professional IC design companies. Famous manufacturers such as MediaTek, Qualcomm, Intel, etc. design their own IC chips and provide chips of different specifications and efficiency for downstream manufacturers to choose. Because IC is designed by each factory, IC design depends on the technology of engineers. The quality of engineers affects the value of an enterprise. However, what steps do engineers take when designing an IC chip?
Design the first step and set goals
In IC design, the most important step is specification. This step is like deciding how many rooms and bathrooms you want before designing a building, and what building laws and regulations you need to comply with. After all the functions are determined, you can design the building, so that you don't need to spend extra time making subsequent modifications. IC design also needs to go through similar steps to ensure that the designed chip will not have any errors.
The first step in formulating specifications is to determine the purpose and effectiveness of IC and set the general direction. Next, check which protocols should be complied with. For example, the chip of the wireless network card should comply with IEEE 802.11 and other specifications. Otherwise, the chip will not be compatible with the products on the market, making it unable to connect with other devices. Finally, it is to establish the implementation method of this IC, allocate different functions into different units, and establish the connection method between different units, so as to complete the specification formulation.
After the specification is designed, the details of the chip design will follow. This step is like writing down the architectural plan preliminarily, and drawing the overall outline for the convenience of subsequent drawing. In the IC chip, the hardware description language (HDL) is used to describe the circuit. The commonly used HDLs are Verilog, VHDL, etc. The functions of an IC can be easily expressed by code. The next step is to check the correctness of the program function and continue to modify it until it meets the expected function.
With a complete plan, the next step is to draw a plane design blueprint. In IC design, the logic synthesis step is to put the confirmed HDL code into the EDA tool, and let the computer convert the HDL code into a logic circuit to generate the following circuit diagram. Then, repeatedly determine whether the logic gate design diagram meets the specification and modify it until the function is correct.
To learn more, please wait for an update.