Chip Design – Flow Chart

If you have a Chip Design in mind and you are new to the Chip Industry, we advise you to get familiar with the Design and Production cycle. A typical Design and Production cycle of a chip design is given the time diagram below

Once we get your requirements, a feasibility study in-house is done. A technical, financial and timeframe feasibility is analyzed. A brief description of the tasks, in the feasibility study, is given in the flow chart

Upon a successful feasibility, the design phase is started. Separate specifications for Digital, Analog and Mixed Signal blocks are developed. Schematics and Silicon implementation is done. Tasks are briefly is defined in the flow chart. Depending on the complex nature of the chip being designed, additional tasks, not mentioned here, are undertaken 

Upon completion of the design, the production phase is initiated. The chip foundry gives the MPW (Multi Project Wafer) dices. Typical quantity is between 5 – 50 dices. The dices are packaged and tested against the technical specifications. If the testing fails, a redesign/Bugfix phase is started and production is reinitiated. In case of a successful test, the chips are delivered to you. The MPW chips then go into the final application 

After sometime, the result of this real-world application implementation is known. Depending upon your feedback, a production run phase is started. The final packaged chips are sample tested and passed on to you, which goes into production run of product 

Typical Design and Production cycle is roughly between 6 – 24 months (Sometimes, even up to 3 years). Hence a careful planning is required, if a chip solution is desired for an end-product. Once in production, the chips are mass produced for a time period typically ranging between 3 – 10 years, before advanced variations of designs kick in