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41-449: QIP is a three-letter abbreviation with multiple meanings, as described below: Quality Intellectual Property Metric (QIP metric), a standard of Silicon intellectual property cores, developed by Virtual Socket Interface Alliance for Integrated circuit design in the field of Semiconductor Quality Improvement Plan , a document outlining methods to improve outcomes, for example in patient care at

82-403: A product requirements document . The architecture defines the fundamental structure, goals and principles of the product. It defines high level concepts and the intrinsic value proposition of the product. Architecture teams take into account many variables and interface with many groups. People creating the architecture generally have a significant amount of experience dealing with systems in

123-426: A system-on-a-chip (SoC) design, which is intended to include all of a device's functions on a single chip. As a result, these chips need to include numerous technical standards that the device will use. One solution to designing such a chip is the reuse of high quality IP. Reusing IP from others means that the chip designer does not need to redesign these elements. IP quality is the key to successful SoC designs, but it

164-489: A functional description into hardware models of components on the chip working together. Each of the simple statements described in the system design can easily turn into thousands of lines of RTL code, which is why it is extremely difficult to verify that the RTL will do the right thing in all the possible cases that the user may throw at it. To reduce the number of functionality bugs, a separate hardware verification group will take

205-425: A hospital. Quality Improvement Paradigm , a framework for continuous quality improvement proposed by Victor Basili in 1984 Quantum information processing Quantum Innovation Platform , a method for rapid innovation, research, and problem solving QIP (complexity) , a complexity class in computational complexity theory Quad in-line package , an electronic chip housing standard Quiet Internet Pager ,

246-405: A proposal for a design team to start the design of a new chip to fit into an industry segment. Upper-level designers will meet at this stage to decide how the chip will operate functionally. This step is where an IC's functionality and design are decided. IC designers will map out the functional requirements, verification testbenches, and testing methodologies for the whole project, and will then turn

287-417: A third-party closed-source freeware multiprotocol IM client Qualified institutional placement , a method of raising equity by a listed company QIP. , an Amsterdam based fashion brand specialized in pique menswear Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title QIP . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change

328-423: Is a sub-field of electronics engineering , encompassing the particular logic and circuit design techniques required to design integrated circuits , or ICs. ICs consist of miniaturized electronic components built into an electrical network on a monolithic semiconductor substrate by photolithography . IC design can be divided into the broad categories of digital and analog IC design. Digital IC design

369-592: Is more concerned with the physics of the semiconductor devices such as gain, matching, power dissipation, and resistance . Fidelity of analog signal amplification and filtering is usually critical, and as a result analog ICs use larger area active devices than digital designs and are usually less dense in circuitry. Modern ICs are enormously complicated. An average desktop computer chip, as of 2015, has over 1 billion transistors. The rules for what can and cannot be manufactured are also extremely complex. Common IC processes of 2015 have more than 500 rules. Furthermore, since

410-460: Is one of the SoC’s most challenging problems. Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation ( HKSTP ) and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology ( HKUST ) started to develop a SIP verification and quality measures framework in 2005, based on QIP metric. The objective is to develop a technical framework for SIP quality measures and evaluation based on QIP. Third-party SIP evaluation service

451-402: Is provided by HKSTP , so that IP integrators can know the quality of their desired SIP cores. Integrated circuit (IC) designers have developed their own IC design , and such design can be reused by other IC designers. Other IC designers can reduce their risk of IC design , because such parts of design (IP cores) are well established and known to work well. But other IC designers do not know

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492-432: Is received which is taken into the lab where it goes through bringup . Bringup is the process of powering, testing and characterizing the design in the lab. Numerous tests are performed starting from very simple tests such as ensuring that the device will power on to much more complicated tests which try to stress the part in various ways. The result of the bringup phase is documentation of characterization data (how well

533-498: Is to produce components such as microprocessors , FPGAs , memories ( RAM , ROM , and flash ) and digital ASICs . Digital design focuses on logical correctness, maximizing circuit density, and placing circuits so that clock and timing signals are routed efficiently. Analog IC design also has specializations in power IC design and RF IC design. Analog IC design is used in the design of op-amps , linear regulators , phase locked loops , oscillators and active filters . Analog design

574-621: The MP3 format or implements IEEE floating-point arithmetic . At later stages in the design process, each of these innocent looking statements expands to hundreds of pages of textual documentation. Upon agreement of a system design, RTL designers then implement the functional models in a hardware description language like Verilog , SystemVerilog , or VHDL . Using digital design components like adders, shifters, and state machines as well as computer architecture concepts like pipelining, superscalar execution, and branch prediction , RTL designers will break

615-476: The interconnection of these components onto a piece of semiconductor, typically silicon . A method to isolate the individual components formed in the substrate is necessary since the substrate silicon is conductive and often forms an active region of the individual components. The two common methods are p-n junction isolation and dielectric isolation . Attention must be given to power dissipation of transistors and interconnect resistances and current density of

656-584: The RTL and design testbenches and systems to check that the RTL actually is performing the same steps under many different conditions, classified as the domain of functional verification . Many techniques are used, none of them perfect but all of them useful – extensive logic simulation , formal methods , hardware emulation , lint -like code checking, code coverage , and so on. Verification such as that done by emulators can be carried out in FPGAs or special processors, and emulation replaced simulation. Simulation

697-402: The area for which the architecture is being created. The work product of the architecture phase is an architectural specification . The micro-architecture is a step closer to the hardware. It implements the architecture and defines specific mechanisms and structures for achieving that implementation. The result of the micro-architecture phase is a micro-architecture specification which describes

738-575: The bug, at a cost of $ 475 million (US). RTL is only a behavioral model of the actual functionality of what the chip is supposed to operate under. It has no link to a physical aspect of how the chip would operate in real life at the materials, physics, and electrical engineering side. For this reason, the next step in the IC design process, physical design stage, is to map the RTL into actual geometric representations of all electronics devices, such as capacitors, resistors, logic gates, and transistors that will go on

779-487: The chip doing the right thing. The third step, physical design, does not affect the functionality at all (if done correctly) but determines how fast the chip operates and how much it costs. A standard cell normally represents a single logic gate , a diode or simple logic components such as flip-flops, or logic gates with multiple inputs. The use of standard cells allows the chip's design to be split into logical and physical levels. A fabless company would normally only work on

820-629: The chip. The main steps of physical design are listed below. In practice there is not a straightforward progression - considerable iteration is required to ensure all objectives are met simultaneously. This is a difficult problem in its own right, called design closure . Before the advent of the microprocessor and software based design tools, analog ICs were designed using hand calculations and process kit parts. These ICs were low complexity circuits, for example, op-amps , usually involving no more than ten transistors and few connections. An iterative trial-and-error process and "overengineering" of device size

861-410: The cost of lower transistor density in the chip and thus larger die sizes. Foundries supply libraries of standard cells to fabless companies, for design purposes and to allow manufacturing of their designs using the foundry's facilities. A Process design kit (PDK) may be provided by the foundry and it may include the standard cell library as well as the specifications of the cells, and tools to verify

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902-414: The design of an IC using EDA software is the design, test, and verification of the instructions that the IC is to carry out. Artificial Intelligence has been demonstrated in chip design for creating chip layouts which are the locations of standard cells and macro blocks in a chip. Integrated circuit design involves the creation of electronic components, such as transistors , resistors , capacitors and

943-536: The design of analog ASICs practical. As many functional constraints must be considered in analog design, manual design is still widespread today, in contrast to digital design which is highly automated, including automated routing and synthesis. As a result, modern design flows for analog circuits are characterized by two different design styles – top-down and bottom-up. The top-down design style makes use of optimization-based tools similar to conventional digital flows. Bottom-up procedures re-use “expert knowledge” with

984-509: The device values on an IC can vary widely which are uncontrollable by the designer. For example, some IC resistors can vary ±20% and β of an integrated BJT can vary from 20 to 100. In the latest CMOS processes, β of vertical PNP transistors can even go below 1. To add to the design challenge, device properties often vary between each processed semiconductor wafer. Device properties can even vary significantly across each individual IC due to doping gradients . The underlying cause of this variability

1025-403: The effects of heat generation across the IC, or to facilitate the placement of connections to circuitry outside the IC. A typical IC design cycle involves several steps: Focused ion beams may be used during chip development to establish new connections in a chip. Roughly saying, digital IC design can be divided into three parts. Note that the second step, RTL design, is responsible for

1066-633: The fabless company's design against the design rules specified by the foundry as well as simulate it using the foundry's cells. PDKs may be provided under non-disclosure agreements. Macros/Macrocells/Macro blocks, Macrocell arrays and IP blocks have greater functionality than standard cells, and are used similarly. There are soft macros and hard macros. Standard cells are usually placed following standard cell rows. The integrated circuit (IC) development process starts with defining product requirements, progresses through architectural definition, implementation, bringup and finally production. The various phases of

1107-401: The finished design. A tiny error here can make the whole chip useless, or worse. The famous Pentium FDIV bug caused the results of a division to be wrong by at most 61 parts per million, in cases that occurred very infrequently. No one even noticed it until the chip had been in production for months. Yet Intel was forced to offer to replace, for free, every chip sold until they could fix

1148-474: The integrated circuit development process are described below. Although the phases are presented here in a straightforward fashion, in reality there is iteration and these steps may occur multiple times. Before an architecture can be defined some high level product goals must be defined. The requirements are usually generated by a cross functional team that addresses market opportunity , customer needs, feasibility , and much more. This phase should result in

1189-455: The interconnect, contacts and vias since ICs contain very tiny devices compared to discrete components, where such concerns are less of an issue. Electromigration in metallic interconnect and ESD damage to the tiny components are also of concern. Finally, the physical layout of certain circuit subblocks is typically critical, in order to achieve the desired speed of operation, to segregate noisy portions of an IC from quiet portions, to balance

1230-410: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=QIP&oldid=1060957057 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Quality Intellectual Property Metric Many computer processors use

1271-486: The logical design of a chip, determining how cells are connected and the functionality of the chip, while following design rules from the foundry the chip will be made in, while the physical design of the chip, the cells themselves, are normally done by the foundry and it comprises the physics of the transistor devices and how they are connected to form a logic gate. Standard cells allow chips to be designed and modified more quickly to respond to market demands, but this comes at

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1312-447: The manufacturing process itself is not completely predictable, designers must account for its statistical nature. The complexity of modern IC design, as well as market pressure to produce designs rapidly, has led to the extensive use of automated design tools in the IC design process. The design of some processors has become complicated enough to be difficult to fully test, and this has caused problems at large cloud providers. In short,

1353-425: The methods used to implement the architecture. In the implementation phase the design itself is created using the micro-architectural specification as the starting point. This involves low level definition and partitioning, writing code , entering schematics and verification. This phase ends with a design reaching tapeout . After a design is created, taped-out and manufactured, actual hardware, 'first silicon',

1394-459: The part performs to spec) and errata (unexpected behavior). Productization is the task of taking a design from engineering into mass production manufacturing. Although a design may have successfully met the specifications of the product in the lab during the bringup phase there are many challenges that product engineers face when trying to mass-produce those designs. The IC must be ramped up to production volumes with an acceptable yield. The goal of

1435-407: The preliminary design into a system-level specification that can be simulated with simple models using languages like C++ and MATLAB and emulation tools. For pure and new designs, the system design stage is where an Instruction set and operation is planned out, and in most chips existing instruction sets are modified for newer functionality. Design at this stage is often statements such as encodes in

1476-585: The productization phase is to reach mass production volumes at an acceptable cost. Once a design is mature and has reached mass production it must be sustained. The process must be continually monitored and problems dealt with quickly to avoid a significant impact on production volumes. The goal of sustaining is to maintain production volumes and continually reduce costs until the product reaches end of life . The initial chip design process begins with system-level design and microarchitecture planning. Within IC design companies, management and often analytics will draft

1517-422: The public standard QIP metric . Other IP designers can know and choose their IP provider, based on the information provided by the third party, HKSTP . The IP providers can also get the evaluation report and improve the quality of their IP cores. There are soft SIP and hard SIP verification and quality measures. IC design Integrated circuit design , semiconductor design , chip design or IC design ,

1558-453: The quality of such IP cores provided. The original IP providers cannot provide the IP cores to other IC designers for evaluation, as it could allow competitors to steal their technologies. The solution is to have a third-party review the quality and value of the IP. HKSTP is the third party between them and can act as a judge body, to evaluate the quality of IP cores of various IP providers, based on

1599-438: The result of solutions previously conceived and captured in a procedural description, imitating an expert's decision. An example are cell generators, such as PCells . A challenge most critical to analog IC design involves the variability of the individual devices built on the semiconductor chip. Unlike board-level circuit design which permits the designer to select devices that have each been tested and binned according to value,

1640-400: Was initially done by simulating logic gates in chips but later on, RTLs in chips were simulated instead. Simulation is still used when creating analog chip designs. Prototyping platforms are used to run software on prototypes of the chip design while it is under development using FPGAs but are slower to iterate on or modify and can't be used to visualize hardware signals as they would appear in

1681-572: Was often necessary to achieve a manufacturable IC. Reuse of proven designs allowed progressively more complicated ICs to be built upon prior knowledge. When inexpensive computer processing became available in the 1970s, computer programs were written to simulate circuit designs with greater accuracy than practical by hand calculation. The first circuit simulator for analog ICs was called SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuits Emphasis). Computerized circuit simulation tools enable greater IC design complexity than hand calculations can achieve, making

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