Therefore, many students want to know the specific work content, skill requirements and development prospects of ic-related engineers in enterprises in order to increase their employment competitiveness. At the same time, many IC newcomers who have got the offer also hope to increase their knowledge reserves in related fields, familiarize themselves with the work content in advance, and make career plans in advance.
To this end, obtaining the offer will reveal the work content and intensity of the digital IC back-end siege lion in detail in this article, and provide you with the workplace experience and suggestions of the incumbent predecessors, hoping to help you.
0 1 digital IC back-end siege lion
The back-end engineer of digital IC is an architect in the field of micro-chip, who is responsible for converting the design drawings of the front-end engineer into the actual circuit structure and generating GDS files that meet the requirements of manufacturers.
02 production content
Including but not limited to: digital physical design, comprehensive netlist editing, the realization of path address resolution protocol flow, the completion of time sequence convergence under reasonable time sequence constraints, the completion of manufacturer's design rule checking and other physical design requirements. Generally speaking, the back-end engineers of digital integrated circuits will often contact the front-end designers of analog integrated circuits, the technicians of manufacturers and the technicians of packaging testing. In terms of expansion, it is subdivided into the following aspects:
place
It mainly involves the visit of sexually transmitted diseases cells. This step is basically to optimize EDA tools according to the distribution of modules, but if there is a problem in the timing, some human intervention is needed.
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Clock tree (CTS) is a time sequence unit in the driving circuit, and the balanced tree (BTS) is generally used. However, with the increase of frequency involved, some paths with deep logic usually adopt useful skew technology.
03
path
That is, winding is usually done automatically by EDA tools under the condition of meeting the manufacturer's design rules. With the development and maturity of technology, EDA tools can optimize the critical timing path through layer-by-layer promotion, and use high-level metals with less delay to optimize the timing.
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In order to get the file that can be actually delivered to production, it is necessary to iteratively optimize the time sequence under the given time sequence constraints, and perform many tasks such as checking the design rules, checking the consistency of the layout netlist, and checking the functional consistency of the optimized netlist.
03
Basic theoretical knowledge includes CMOS related knowledge, semiconductor basic principle, digital circuit design knowledge and so on.
The necessary tools include EDA tools and workshop and UserGuide in scripting languages such as shell or python.
In addition, in order to establish our own superior technical barriers, we need to further study the STA principle; Knowledge of uncertainty/setup/pause timing; Understand some special requirements of analog RF IP, such as PLL, sensor, etc. Familiar with the design, private room and seal test requirements of high-speed IO; Understand some typical functional design programs or data streams of commonly used IP, such as ARM core, PCIE, DDR, etc.
In order to be different from ordinary back-end engineers, it is best to learn power planning; Deeply; Know how to achieve testability/coverage in different test modes; Understand how to screen plates to reduce sealing and testing costs; Familiar with how to improve chip yield from timing, power consumption or other aspects.
04
Mainly depends on the project time cycle. Based on the characteristics of digital IC backend, the work intensity is usually the highest on the eve of film streaming, because the work progress of digital IC backend engineers will seriously affect whether the layout and products can be submitted on time.
Although the process of large companies is relatively perfect and the overall loading is relatively balanced, any detail in the project will affect the whole process, so the back end of digital IC often cannot escape the progress delay caused by any link error.
05
The back end of digital integrated circuit is a high demand and high growth industry. With the rapid development of the chip industry, the production scale is getting larger and larger, and the complexity of chip integration is getting higher and higher. The demand of digital IC back-end designers is bound to rise, so there are many job opportunities and it is very easy to jump ship.
Generally speaking, the back-end design is easy to use and difficult to improve. Because the back-end design involves more processes, it is more universal than the front-end design. But if you want to be independent, you still need to accumulate, be suitable for deepening, and follow the development path of technical experts. But if you are involved in design, IP, packaging, testing and technology, you can also transform PMO or start your own business.
06
Senior advice
Lay a good foundation, pay attention to accumulate theoretical knowledge, practice more, be proactive, ask more questions and learn more.