IC fabrication

hi,
plz help me with designing an integrated circuit. Is there any fabrication kit available in market for designing the ic. Or is der any way to fabricate an ic.

Is this an analog or digital application?
What do you want the I.C. to do?
How fast do you want the I.C. to operate?

You Could:
Write a program for a ATMEGA328 to get it to do what you want.
Program the 328 with this program.
Job done.
.

Designing digital chips (presumably ASICs) is a really big deal, far beyond what we do here. We design circuits that use existing chips, so this is outside the scope of these forums. Making ones own chips requires expertise in integrated circuit design (a major field of study in and of itself) and a way to get them made. It sounds like you have no clue how to do this, and are possibly unaware that it's a huge freaking deal, way beyond anything we do or talk about doing around these parts.

Clearly you have no idea whatsoever about what fabricating integrated circuits means, and will obviously not be doing this within the next five years of a University Engineering course.

Fabricating circuits with integrated circuits is another thing, and you can certainly get into such experimentation directly by studying up on it and buying a ready-made module - such as an Arduino UNO or a Arduino "Nano" plus a solderless breadboard.

What you really need to do, is to explain what your actual project is. and this will probably be a suitable place for advice on how to go about it or where else to go if a microcontroller is not the part you really need.

Start studying electric: Using the Electric VLSI Design System, version 9.07

And you'll start your journey towards being a low-level chip designer!

Higher level tools cost serious money I believe. And if you are talking analog IC's there's a whole
lot more to know about semiconductor physics and custom processes I fear.

Or perhaps you want something easier and cheaper like an FPGA dev board?

Buy CADENCE
https://www.cadence.com/en/default.aspx

Choose a foundry. We use TOWERJAZZ

Get the design kit. (This is actually free, I think)

It should only cost a few hundred K and take a few years and you can have your IC.

If you want to design custom circuitry into an IC, an FPGA is a great way to go. It's quick and relatively inexpensive, plus you can correct your mistakes by reprogramming it.

I've used parts manufactured by Xilinx and by Altera, and the tools are free (at least, they were when last I used them, some years back).

Programming is done in a language such as Verilog. If you're familiar with programming, it should be fairly straightforward to learn it.

If you have access to Mathworks "Simulink," you can actually create an FPGA design symbolically. It's pretty cool.

I think what you are asking is how to get started with digital IC design. This list gives an overview of software that is available for design, simulation, and verification.

Design an integrated circuit is a real an difficult job.
The necessary knowledge in technology are enormous and the cost is gigantic.
I had the chance to participate in design some integrated circuits as active client. It always had two or three runs to get a fonctionel circuit. Expect more $ 100,000 per run.

FPGAs are the right solution.
Main IC designers use it to test new design before launching in foundry.

You can find on Ebay Altera boards for under $ 20.
IDE Quartus is free.
Xilink is best, but Xilink is expensive and IDE xilink is less simple than that Altera.
For a test Altera is sufficient.

Attention, even if you can handle only programming lines (verilog or VHDL), to obtain a good FPGA you will need to practice digital electronics. You will have, among other things, to manage physical properties like propagation delay inside the chip.

Design a digital IC is more electronic than programing.

I've not got anything particularly helpful to add, but I working in a Wafer Fab for about 20 years (Plessey/GEC/Mitel), and fixed my fair share of Ion Implanters and various other equipment :slight_smile:

Having a custom chip made would be massively :o expensive.

Ian.

It requires a massive very specialized building not just a few knick-knacks in the typical lab. The air handling requirements alone are prohibitive.

I have work related exposure at a wafer fab facility for making semiconductor disk heads at Quantum, formerly Digital Equipment Corp. The whole process is non-trivial, which is why the number of manufacturers is not a huge list and interestingly enough... many shops only do design now and contract out the actual chip manufacturing to the far east.

Of course, if you are talking FPGA... that's a whole different thing.

As a datapoint you need standard clean-room conditions just to connect bond wires between a chip and
its leadframe, the actual semiconductor foundries themselves have the cleanest air on the planet.

MarkT:
As a datapoint you need standard clean-room conditions just to connect bond wires between a chip and
its leadframe, the actual semiconductor foundries themselves have the cleanest air on the planet.

Nonsense. With modern passivations and coatings, you can bond in a non-laminar flow environment as long as it is relatively dust free.

I think we have scared the OP enough. He hasn't returned.

I was only going by what the scientists at Harwell Campus say... Only time I've been in a clean room.

The dirtiest Callander I ever saw was ironically in a clean room.

You can get small runs of a few die built by MOSIS or CMC Microsystems for a few thousand $US not including packaging or testing. Older processes with relaxed groundrules are cheaper. They process multi project wafers where chips from several customers are processed with the same mask set. Several customers sharing a mask set keeps the price down for the individual customers. This route is more expensive than FPGA.

Last time i was on campus Mum turned up with a hoover.
Had to hide the GF in the cupboard.

You can use Cadence for custom IC design to automate many of the routine tasks to involved in custom IC designs.

Boardburner2:
Last time i was on campus Mum turned up with a hoover.
Had to hide the GF in the cupboard.

Kudos for that one - the most appropriate reply so far! :grinning: