Let's Program the Transistors
A test chip is a small-scale integrated circuit that is specifically designed for testing purposes, feasibility checks and performance analysis. It serves as a platform for evaluating the functionality of individual circuit blocks, testing the reliability of manufacturing processes, and verifying the performance of the design before it is implemented in a larger chip. Test…
MPW stands for Multi-Project Wafer, which is a cost-effective way to prototype integrated circuits. In an MPW, multiple projects share a single wafer during the fabrication process, which enables lower costs by spreading the cost of the wafer among multiple projects. Typically, several customers with small designs collaborate to share the costs of the wafer…
A wafer is a thin slice of semiconductor material, typically made of silicon, that serves as the substrate for the fabrication of integrated circuits in the field of VLSI. During the fabrication process, the wafer undergoes a series of processes such as doping, lithography, etching, and deposition to create the desired patterns and structures for…
Many of you might have worked on different VLSI technology nodes such as 180 nm, 90 nm, 45 nm etc. in circuit simulation tools like Cadence etc. With the invention and evolution of transistors, various technologies came into existence and more would continue to come in future. According to Moore’s law, the number of transistors…
MOS scaling has introduced many undesired effects, known second order ones being channel length modulation, velocity saturation, mobility degradation etc. These are introducing a new set of challenges for the designers. From the performance perspective, supply voltage scaling has reduced the driving capability of MOS due to decrease in effective overdrive voltage. On the other…