designing an IC for beginner

[XC.6800]

what knowledge is need for a beginner to design his/her own IC. What IC is usually designed by undergraduate student.

what software is needed for that purpose.

Thank you
XC

 

[dick_freebird]

Back when I was a wee lad, with only a beard to keep me
warm, my first IC was done with rubylith and graph paper
and an X-acto knife and had no PMOS. The NMOS wasn't
that great either. College semiconductor lab, 2" wafers,
all good fun.

Nowadays, you'll have to look hard for a fab that will let
you tape out with anything besides one of the four major
tool sets, which they chose to support - Cadence, Mentor,
Tanner, SimuCAD (Silvaco). MOSIS might let you use LASI
or other "free" tools but everybody gets DRC'd on the
reticle and if you fail, you walk (or make a deal - always
the forte' of broke students).

There's an infinitely deep pool of knowledge but fortunately
most of it is irrelevant at any given time. Question is,
which?

Your IC could be a hex inverter, that would be pretty darn
simple and only need roughly right FET models or even
process attributes and hand calcs, depending. It could be
an amplifier, wanting better quality of analysis / models.
Or you could be a kook and say you're doing a microprocessor,
and fail to deliver within the semester's time. Setting the
right expectations is more than half of living up to them.

 

[ducvilla]

Hi XC.6800!
I am an undergraduate student ^_^. Also, i am newbie in IC design, i focus on analog IC design.

"what knowledge is need for a beginner to design his/her own IC."

- I follow the courses about analog IC design of UC Berkeley, i can easily find them in the internet, each course includes: lecture notes, video, homeworks, test, also recommended book chapters or papers for problems. I think learn by this way is good to me.

"What IC is usually designed by undergraduate student."

- First, i simulate the circuits in the books to understand more about each small block, then i build the larger circuit, for example: bandgap, operational amplifier, comparator, flash ADC...Also, i have to connect small blocks together to get "IC". Actually, when i connect them, there are some new problems appear, but i have to read papers a lot to solve them. I designed successfully IC LDO by this way.
I will design another one with the same these steps.
ps: (I think digital IC and analog IC have the different way to reach the design problems).

That is all of my experience until now.
Hope this help!

 

[rainy adams]

I suggest you to use Proteus to make schematics, and if you want to make PCB layout, use Eagle.