what is ic systems?
What is an IC system? Different engineers will probably give different answers to this question. An algorithm engineer would say that an IC system is hardware that accomplishes a specific function; an architecture design engineer would say that an IC includes control, arithmetic, and storage parts; a circuit design engineer would say that it is a combination of adders, multipliers, and non-gates, operational amplifiers, switching capacitors, etc. But the fact that these answers are right, if they are combined is a more complete answer.
The digital part is the main part of the IC system, mainly using the synchronous design method, that is, the clock is used to unify and coordinate the operation of all parts of the system. It is important to note that synchronous design is the mainstream of digital design.
Synchronous digital design can be seen as a combination of logic and timing units (registers and latches), data in the time unit - combination logic - timing unit between this structure to pass down the level.
2、Analog part
Generally speaking, the analog circuit in IC system includes the following parts.
Analog-to-digital converter (ADC): converts analog signals to digital signals.
Digital-to-analog converter (DAC): converting digital signals to analog signals.
programmable gain amplifier (PGA): controls the analog gain through the digital part.
Phase Locked Loop (PLL): used to generate the clock at high frequency and for clock recovery (recovering the clock from the data).
3、I/O section
I/O is the interface between the IC system and the external environment, which can be very simple or complex.
Foundry provides a comprehensive library, usually including three types of PAD units: input PAD, output PAD and bi-directional PAD. in the design, these PADs can be regarded as standard units, directly instantiated can be.
I/O can also be very complex. For example, USB, 1394 ( fireware), PCI I E, etc. can be considered as complex IOs. these complex IOs can be integrated into the whole chip system as IP.
I/O PADs are directly connected to the external world and therefore must take into account the impact of external parasitic parameters, electrostatic protection (ESD), packaging requirements, voltage conversion, overvoltage protection, signal integrity, etc.
Designing I/O PADs is much more complex than designing standard cells, especially for applications with high performance and East Palace and requirements.
4、Memory
With the flow of SOC architecture, embedded memory is increasingly used in the chip. Memory is critical to the overall chip design, which is due to.
The bandwidth of the memory has become the bottleneck of performance in several high-speed IC designs.
memory may occupy more than 70% of the chip's area.
memory consumes most of the chip's power consumption.
5, the connection line
Connect that includes the chip's signal chain lines, power lines, clock lines. In a chip system, the connection line is the most easily ignored part. In fact it is very important, especially in the field of deep submicron design is more so, it can be said that how to deal with the connection, will be a long-standing problem that plagues EDA designers and IC designers.
