Course development in IC manufacturing

A traditional curriculum in electrical engineering separates semiconductor processing courses from courses in circuit design. As a result, manufacturing topics involving yield management and the study of random process variations impacting circuit behaviour are usually vaguely treated. The subject matter of this paper is to report a course developed at Texas A&M University, USA, to compensate for the aforementioned shortcoming. This course attempts to link technological process and circuit design domains by emphasizing aspects such as process disturbance modeling, yield modeling, and defect-induced fault modeling. In a rapidly changing environment where high-end technologies are evolving towards submicron features and towards high transistor integration, these aspects are key factors to design for manufacturability. The paper presents the course's syllabus, a description of its main topics, and results on selected project assignments carried out during a normal academic semeste

Course development in IC manufacturing

A traditional curriculum in electrical engineering separates semiconductor processing courses from courses in circuit design. As a result, manufacturing topics involving yield management and the study of random process variations impacting circuit behaviour are usually vaguely treated. The subject matter of this paper is to report a course developed at Texas A&M University, USA, to compensate for the aforementioned shortcoming. This course attempts to link technological process and circuit design domains by emphasizing aspects such as process disturbance modeling, yield modeling, and defect-induced fault modeling. In a rapidly changing environment where high-end technologies are evolving towards submicron features and towards high transistor integration, these aspects are key factors to design for manufacturability. The paper presents the course's syllabus, a description of its main topics, and results on selected project assignments carried out during a normal academic semeste

Appendix B: Rapid development approaches for system engineering and design

Conventional processes often produce systems which are obsolete before they are fielded. This paper explores some of the reasons for this, and provides a vision of how we can do better. This vision is based on our explorations in improved processes and system/software engineering tools

Requirement- and cost-driven product development process

This paper presents an approach, which enables a cost and requirement driven control of the design process. It is based on the concept of Property-Driven Development (PDD) [WeWD-03]. Integrated in the approach are well established tools like Target Costing and Value Analysis as well as methods of design for requirements. In the authors\u27 approach, the product development process is controlled by an ongoing target/actual (\u27Soll/Ist\u27) comparison between target properties and the state of properties currently achieved. For each property, depending on the fulfilment, quality ratings from the customer\u27s point of view are assigned. The aim of the product development process is the maximisation of the sum of these quality ratings. This aim can be realised based on the PDD approach, because it supports the engineer/designer by explicitly representing the interdependencies between the properties (that have to be optimized) and the characteristics that influence these properties

Design guidelines for manufacturability

Matching the configuration of a product to available production capabilities during the design process directly affects product cost and hence product competitiveness. Existing approaches to improving manufacturability are helpful in the latter stages of the design process and usually involve corrective redesign. To avoid redesign, designers require appropriate guidance in the early stages of the design process. Guidelines, that is prescriptive recommendations for actions to address issues, are frequently used to provide this guidance. However, guideline sets are often poorly structured, incomplete, and the guidelines difficult to retrieve and apply. The overall aim of this research is to improve guidance to designers, particularly manufacturability guidance, early in the design process. Particular objectives of this research are to improve existing methods of guideline collection, storage, and retrieval. The research proceeded in the following pattern: - Case studies explored manufacturability problems in a small company. - Guideline support concepts were developed using a retrospective case study. - Collection concepts were developed with observational studies. - Storage approaches were developed using advanced composite guidelines. - A link-based retrieval technique was validated with a mechanical design protocol study. - Collection, storage, and retrieval methods were empirically tested. The results of this research were: - a technique to directly relate guidelines to the design process - a system of links relating guidelines to each other - an Action-Centred Guideline Approach - a preliminary software implementation of the approach - validation of the utility of the approach. The conclusions from this research are: - Guidance in the early stages of the design process can be improved through the use of structured guidelines. - The Action-Centred Guideline Approach improves the collection, storage, and retrieval of guidelines. - Empirical validation showed that guideline links are an effective means for improving guideline retrieval. - Further research is required in the areas of integrating the approach with other design tools, and in extending the link technique

System Qualities Ontology, Tradespace and Affordability (SQOTA) Project – Phase 4

This task was proposed and established as a result of a pair of 2012 workshops sponsored by the DoD Engineered Resilient Systems technology priority area and by the SERC. The workshops focused on how best to strengthen DoD’s capabilities in dealing with its systems’ non-functional requirements, often also called system qualities, properties, levels of service, and –ilities. The term –ilities was often used during the workshops, and became the title of the resulting SERC research task: “ilities Tradespace and Affordability Project (iTAP).” As the project progressed, the term “ilities” often became a source of confusion, as in “Do your results include considerations of safety, security, resilience, etc., which don’t have “ility” in their names?” Also, as our ontology, methods, processes, and tools became of interest across the DoD and across international and standards communities, we found that the term “System Qualities” was most often used. As a result, we are changing the name of the project to “System Qualities Ontology, Tradespace, and Affordability (SQOTA).” Some of this year’s university reports still refer to the project as “iTAP.”This material is based upon work supported, in whole or in part, by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Assistant of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) under Contract HQ0034-13-D-0004.This material is based upon work supported, in whole or in part, by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Assistant of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) under Contract HQ0034-13-D-0004