Welcome Joren Vaes, design engineer at SOFICS

Simulation is critical when designing analog devices based on a PDK from the fab
Parasitics are significant, especially with new nodes having upwards of 16 metal layers
Chris complained about a class where the professor made them draw planar structures with graph paper with colored pencils
Large fabs on leading edge nodes have 1800 page textbook of rules
Because the constraints get tighter, that book gets longer for each node
2 nm mass production on finfet currently with TSMC
22 was the last classic cmos
Finfet, looks like a devil
‘gate all around’ / nanosheet
CFET (complementary field effect transistor) is next
Joren really gets Maxwells Equations…as you have to at super high speeds
SOFICS are making phy’s / IP blocks
Amplifiers that are DC to 50 GHz
Making a datasheet for the resulting IP block
Joren got his PhD working on millimeter wave applications
It’s all just physics
Using coils to impedance match between layers
Reflecting off of different materials at angles is Snells law (not lorentz equation) and that extends to different materials at different wavelengths
Cables are very lossy at 100 GHz…dBs per cm
Parasitics impact every part of the design process
Wireline community – name for the high speed interfaces, including research in the space
Most transistor threshhold voltages that Joren works with are … 750 mV!
Voltage dependent drc rules
Electromigration – holes in wires from electrons
ESD is a big part of the business, and a large source of parasitics
New product development for IP blocks
Working with customers and Foundry at the 2 nm node
Design companies need to be paying 100s of thousands to software providers
After, it goes to spice and schedmatic
Joren decides whether to jump in on layout
LVS – layout vs schematic
Parasitic extraction (spice netlist)
PDKs define how you can do the layout stage
Lower cost tools exist but more expensive tools have tooling that tells you when you’re violating DRC
3 main vendors
- Cadence
- Synopsis
- Siemens (Calibre)
Foundries soemtimes only support one tool
Doing test wafers allows testing of structures. They often get MPW at a discount from the fab (since they’re often testing new processes as well)
How do they test with packaging options?
- ‘low speed’ can be die bonded or pcb mounted
- high speed does on wafer probing (with veeeery expensive probes)
Check out Sofics.com for more info on the company. They also have a blog with a great name.
Follow or connect with Joren on LinkedIn

Morning Briefing vom 16.05.2018