Over the past 10 years that has started to invert.
#ACCESS CHAPTER 2 SIMULATION EXAM SOFTWARE#
Up to about 10 years ago, chips defined the market and software was written to run on those chips. Something else has happened, however, that is changing the landscape. But the cost of this technology limits its use, and the most advanced processes have their own set of counter-intuitive challenges. Innovations such as extreme ultraviolet lithography have helped somewhat with the wavelength of light problem. Custom chips can still be quite vexing to build. This last chapter takes us to the present day. Chapter Four: Innovation Re-Boot and Democratized Design Debuts Again ASIC design starts fell, leaving only the rich companies (again) or the companies fortunate enough to own a large share of a very large market to participate.Ĭhapter Three lasted from the early 2000s until about 10 years ago. And some manufacturing effects started to move in the opposite direction, appearing to defy the laws of physics.Īll this made it very time-consuming and very expensive to build an ASIC, even with a well-built-out infrastructure available. Process corners exploded just to keep track of it all. Subtle circuit effects began to be even more subtle. Three-dimensional transistors, lots more routing layers, and feature sizes so small they defied the limitations of the wavelength of light itself. The complexity of semiconductor manufacturing went through the roof. Chapter Three: ASICs Get PriceyĪll was going well on the product innovation front, and then deep submicron happened.
Lots of new chip startups were funded, and the market exploded with many new and highly differentiated products.Ĭhapter Two lasted from the 1980s to the early 2000s. New EDA companies, like Daisy Systems, Mentor Graphics, and Valid Logic got an enthusiastic welcome from the new breed of ASIC customer. Tools to assist with the design and manufacturing of custom chips also started to become available around this time. And so, the application-specific integrated circuit, or ASIC, era began. LSI and VTI built custom chips for one customer and typically one application. The new entrants enabled those companies lacking the vast resources to build a custom chip to finally access the technology.
The focus was exclusively on building custom chips for others. These companies had the resources to design and build custom chips, just like the IDMs. Early pioneers such as LSI Logic (LSI) and VLSI Technology Inc. Chapter Two: The First Wave of Democratized Designīeginning in the 1980s, two magical events occurred. In the pre-EDA days, these companies also wrote the software needed to design and manufacture custom chips – everything from simulation and layout to fracturing those layouts into trapezoids to make photomasks.Ĭhapter One lasted from about the 1950s to the early 1980s. Life was good if you were part of an IDM. They all built highly differentiated products based on the custom chips they designed and built. Companies like TI, RCA, General Electric, IBM, Bell Labs, and Sony were some of the names that dominated the landscape. An incredible investment all-in.īut the opportunity for product differentiation was vast. They built any reusable IP that was needed, and they operated the mask lab and fabrication facility required to build those custom chips. These large, monolithic companies had the vast design resources required for custom chips. This was the so-called era of integrated device manufacturers, or IDMs. Chapter One: Chip Innovation Is a Rich Person’s Gameīack in the dawn of time (from a chip perspective), custom chip design and the innovation potential it unlocked were reserved for those companies with the resources to do it all. But what exactly does that mean? It turns out, when you ask the question makes a difference. I’m a big fan of alliteration, so democratized design borders on poetry for me. It got to the heart of what I think this word means, at least in my world. The next hit was, make (something) accessible to everyone. Using a word to define itself is, well, annoying. The first hit I got was, to make democratic. I started with a Google search for the term. It doesn’t appear in normal conversation very much and is often used to describe a major trend.