ASIC Design and Manufacturing Services

Different types of ASICs

ASICs can be roughly categorized into digital, mixed signal and analog ASICs. VLSI Solution has specialized to mixed signal ones, especially the ones requiring digital signal processing with analog and digital interfaces. We also do fully digital and almost fully analog ASICs.

From the point of view of design effort, there are three groups:

Firmware modifications of the standard producs
ASICs based on VLSI Solution's existing IP
ASIC's that require research

Is ASIC a good option for my system?

Weather the development and production of an ASIC is a viable option for a particular system depends on many aspects.

volume per year
life time
cost
IP protection
level of integration
size of the device
programmability

ASIC Project

An ASIC design project consists of five main stages: specification, design, prototype manufacturing with possibly several rounds, evaluation and transfer to production.

Specification

After the initial feasibility analysis, the first step of an ASIC project is always the writing of a specification. At this stage the overall system architecture is analyzed and optimized, this usually involves deciding which functions should be implemented with the ASIC and determining their specifications. If the system design already exists, this can be fairly straightforward, but if the whole system is new or requires many alterations, many iterations may be needed. Sometimes even a prototype ASIC is required before the system design can be finalized.

The final document of the specification stage is usually a datasheet of the ASIC.

At the specification stage also a suitable implementation technology is chosen. This can be 0.35um CMOS or some special technology for mainly analog designs, 0.18um for an ASIC requiring a large amount of logic but with very high analog performance or for mostly digital designs for example 0.11um - 0.13 um. Pure digital designs can be done down 22nm.

Design and prototyping

After the specification is finalized, the actual ASIC can be designed. This involves creating the top level layout ...

Prototypes are usually manufactured in an MPW (multi project wafer) run. This is usually cost optimum way of doing a prototype. If the design such that prototypes are not necessarily required or fa

- what MPW means

- number of rounds

- specification changes

- typical problems (maybe?)