Re: Vanakkam from Chennai Quote:
Originally Posted by searchingheaven I really admire you guys. Electronics is an ubiquitous component of every device that we use in our general and professional lives. Could you give us a slightly detailed account of what you do as a VLSi engineer? |
Thanks for your kind words searchingheaven. As a VLSI engineer we are involved in creating System-On-Chip [SoC] devices perform all the functionalities required for a particular function. For Eg, earlier we had multiple discrete components from various vendors put-together for achieving functionality. But recently with advancements in semiconductor processing and shrinking process nodes (14nm/10nm) etc, we are able to put more and more logic together in a single piece of a Silicon Chip achieve performance and power benefits.
But this increasing complexity has side effects too - we need to ensure that with increasing clock speed, more number of CPU cores etc. power and thermal limits also needs to be considered. So the VLSI industry has multiple domains - Design, Verification, Design for testability, Physical design, Emulation & Validation, Embedded software development etc focusing on every aspect.
Also once the device is fabricated in foundry (Taiwan/China), they are loaded in machines for checking the functionality before releasing to customers. There are multiple teams involved in functionality verification, reliability, Fault analysis and yield improvement.
VLSI industry has lot of investment compared to normal Software, but with the volume of chipsets running in millions, they are usually profitable. Else the small companies get acquired by bigger ones to achieve economies of scale.
Hope this was able to provide insight, let me know if you have more questions. |