What is VLSI

and Why You Should Care

Dr. Joseph Elias
Adjunct Faculty, ECE Department
Modeling MTS, Cypress Semiconductor

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 What is this?
Whatever it is, looks simple.

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WELL, IT GETS SLIGHTLY MORE COMPLICATED
WHAT IS THIS? SEE ANY ODDITY?

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 STILL NOT CLEAR?
CAN’T SEE THE FOREST FROM THE TREES?

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NOW?

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 NOW?

65nm SRAM memory cell

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 Who am I?
• Graduated from UK, 1989, BSEE
– Electro-magnetics, EMC, one laser class
– No hard-core semiconductor class
• Masters, Ph.D., Rice University
– Laser interaction with semiconductors
– Semiconductor research with Texas Instruments
• Texas Instruments, 1995-2000
• Cypress Semiconductor, 2000-present
• UK, 2000-present
• I was sitting in your seat 15-20 years ago
• I thought I was going to be a laser / EM engineer
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 Why you should care?

• One day you will graduate, then what?

• Do you want to apply your previous class work?
• What are your options for jobs or grad school?
– Possibilities you may not have thought of

• EE584 Intro to VLSI may help your career decision

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 But I’ve heard the class is hard…..
• EE584 is taught as a segue to the real world
– We use industry-standard tools
– Class work is encouraged to be done at Cypress
• Job prospects from recent students:
– Cypress has hired 19 (16 full time, 3 co-ops)
– TI, Intel, Cisco, Cadence, Silicon Valley start-ups
– These are high-paying, cutting-edge companies
• “Hard” classes are relative to your expectations
– Your competition: thousands of EE grads each year
– Are you going to settle for lower echelon jobs?
• But can I do the work?
– Yes, if you like devices, circuits, programming, …
• But I can get a good paying jobs w/o much effort…
– Chicken and egg
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What is expected from an engineer?
• Hours:
– 8am  6pm (nominally)
– 7am 12am (sometimes)
• Skills:
– Typing
– Speaking
– Reading
– Programming (SKILL, Perl, Ruby, Shell, XL, … )
– Flexibility (try new things)
– Paying attention, energy, enthusiasm
– Playing well with others
• List is independent of your specialty

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 What can VLSI do for me?
• Jobs
– Industry is cyclical, but drives economy
• Grad school
– New technologies to replace Silicon needed
• VLSI can lead you to:
– West Coast (OR, CA)
– East Coast (NY, MA, NJ, NC)
– Midwest (IL, MN)
– Southwest (TX, AZ)
– International (India, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, England,
Japan, Taiwan, China)

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 What do you learn/use in VLSI?
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Software
• Presentations
• Documentation
• What is important in order to get a job

• FALL EE584 VLSI INTRO MWF 9am

• SPRING EE589 ADVANCED VLSI MWF 9am

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BACKUP

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What are possible jobs I could do?
• Software
– Web interfaces: financials, data mining
– Scripts to automate manual tasks
• Hardware
– Production : large volumes (hundreds – millions)
– Engineering : small volumes (one, two, ten)
• Writing
– Documentation of what you just did
– Simple, yet hard to accomplish
• Speaking
– Management, communicate effectively
– Believable, trustworthy

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 What is a semiconductor?

• Small switch
• Put lots of them together, you get a chip
• Used in
– Cell phones
– Computers
– Toasters
– Cars
– Everything ………

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How much does an engineer get paid?
• 2001 IEEE Salary Survey: Median $93k (n=9,700)
– Experience level
– This is not a starting salary
– Typically takes 10 years work experience

– Education level
– Ph.D. = Master + (3 to 5)
– Master = Bachelor + (3 to 5)

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 Recent Trends
250 100
90
Boom
80
200
70
60
150
Boom Boom Boom 50

Percent Change
40
Boom
Sales ($B)

30
100
20
10
50 0
-10
Recession
0 Recession -20
-30
Recession Recession -40
-50 -50
1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year

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 How Many Chips?
10 MILLION WAFERS * ~500 CHIPS / WAFER = 5 BILLION CHIPS / QUARTER
EACH CHIP $0.50 – $50
Wafers (Millions) vs. Time

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14

13

12

11

10

8
1999-3 1999-4 2000-1 2000-2 2000-3 2000-4 2001-1 2001-2 2001-3 2001-4 2002-1 2002-2
Year-Quarter
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 Historical Trends
250 400

350
200
300

250
150

Percent Change
200
Sales ($B)

100 150

100
50
50

0
0
-50

-50 -100
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Year
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 Who Hires VLSI-Types?
• Semiconductor companies • Fab-less “Design Houses”
2001 2001 2001 2001
Rank Company Sales Rank Company Sales
1 Intel 23.5 1 Qualcomm 1.24
2 ST Micro 6.4 2 Nvidia 1.21
3 Toshiba 6.1 3 Xilinx 1.15
4 TI 6.0 4 Via 1.01
5 Samsung 5.2 5 Broadcom 0.96
6 Motorola 4.8 6 Altera 0.84
7 NEC 4.8 7 Cirrus Logic 0.53
8 Infineon 4.6 8 ATI Techn 0.52
9 Philips 4.4 9 Media Tek 0.45
10 AMD 3.9 10 QLogic 0.36

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 Size, Speed Trends
70 35

60 30

50 25

Speed (GHz)
Gate (nm)

40 20

30 15

20 10

10 5

0 0
2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018
Year

Present solutions will no longer work in 2005

Scale: human hair  100,000 nm, red blood cell 5,000nm
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