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What is VLSIand 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 COMPLICATEDWHAT 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

Recession

Recession

BoomBoomBoom

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Recession

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How Many Chips?

Wafers (Millions) vs. Time

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1999-3 1999-4 2000-1 2000-2 2000-3 2000-4 2001-1 2001-2 2001-3 2001-4 2002-1 2002-2

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10 MILLION WAFERS * ~500 CHIPS / WAFER = 5 BILLION CHIPS / QUARTER

EACH CHIP $0.50 – $50

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Historical Trends

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Who Hires VLSI-Types?

• Semiconductor companies • Fab-less “Design Houses”

2001Rank Company

2001Sales

1 Intel 23.52 ST Micro 6.43 Toshiba 6.14 TI 6.05 Samsung 5.26 Motorola 4.87 NEC 4.88 Infineon 4.69 Philips 4.4

10 AMD 3.9

2001Rank Company

2001Sales

1 Qualcomm 1.242 Nvidia 1.213 Xilinx 1.154 Via 1.015 Broadcom 0.966 Altera 0.847 Cirrus Logic 0.538 ATI Techn 0.529 Media Tek 0.45

10 QLogic 0.36

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Size, Speed Trends

Present solutions will no longer work in 2005

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