Essential Guide to Semiconductors, The

New-Style Design Process

Today the process is radically different, although no less painstaking or complex. Modern chip-design tools have done away with the error-prone manual work of taping up individual layers, but they only shift the workload. Modern multimillion-transistor chips supply more than enough new challenges to make up the difference.

EDA Design Tools

Modern chips are far too complex to design manually. No single engineer can personally understand everything that goes on inside a new chip. Even teams of engineers have no single member who truly understands all the details and nuances of the design. One person might manage the project and command the overall architecture of the chip, but individual engineers will be responsible for ...