Microelectronics deals with design, manufacturing and test of integrated transistor circuits.
At the beginning emphasis was on integrating as many transistors as possible in a small
area achieving high operating speeds (timing closure).
Nowadays in 10 nm technologies manufacturing costs and mask costs are very high
and millions of transistors are available. Focus has changed to identify applications
where millions of chips are needed (mobile phones) and to be able to
build and verify robust circuits with millions of transistors in a short time frame.
Microelectronics maintained a steady 30% productivity gain every 2 years over the last 30 years.
Semiconductor manufacturing is using roadmaps, data collection and analysis (Big Data),
simulation, automation in software and hardware (Industry 4.0) and dedicated
test strategies (Design for test) and verification to be successfull.
This class presents typical software tools for circuit development and manufacturing processes.
A typical chip development example is done in the laboratory.
- Dozent/in: Jörg Vollrath