Talk on IC Design

Last week, I gave an invited talk at a hybrid event in Lima, Peru, entitled ”Open Gate: A Top-Down Silicon Journey”. This event was led by the IEEE CAS Student chapter of the National Major University of San Marcos (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos), Lima, Peru, and co-organized by IEEE CAS Student chapters from other peruvian universities such as the National University of Engineering (Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería), the Peruvian University of Applied Science (Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas), the Private University of the North (Universidad Privada del Norte), the University of Engineering and Technology (Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología), and the National Technological University of Southern Lima (UNTELS).

For my talk, I was asked to give an introduction to microelectronics and an overview of the field from the point of view of Academia and Industry. The audience were junior and senior undergraduate students from majors related to electrical engineering, computer engineering, and software engineering. I took some time to organize my talk given the diverse background of the target audience and decided to start by answering the following questions:

1. What do Electrical Engineers do?,
2. Where do I find Integrated Circuits (ICs)?,
3. What does an IC look like?, and
4. What does an IC designer do?.

I also wanted to show how ICs fit within a modern electronic system. Since many disciplines are involved in the design of integrated circuits, I thought it would be great to introduce the different levels of abstraction of an electronic system and give examples for each of them. Here is the figure I made for this purpose.

With this background covered in the lecture, I thought of answering one key central question: What are Integrated Circuits?. Here is my answer:

Integrated Circuits (ICs) are a set of active and passive electromagnetic components that are laid out in a planar (for now) fashion, interconnected according to a system architecture, and fabricated in the same substrate using microfabrication techniques in a cleanroom.

To emphasize the important aspect of active and passive components, I looked for a good photo of an IC with inductors, capacitors, and analog and digital circuits. I found a good one in the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) website in the following link. The resultant slide is below.

To finish the talk, I wanted to show examples from industry and academia. For the industry example, I wanted to choose a device that would bring the ICs as close as possible to the audience. A smartphone would be great for this purpose. In order to show the ICs and electronic boards, I went to the website iFixit and searched for images of the iPhone 15 and 15 Pro. They have a good selection of really good pictures.

For the academic example, I looked at some of the research I did when I was an assistant professor at the University of Southern California (USC). My student at the time, Angsagan Abdigazy, designed a novel Bimodal Low-Power Transceiver featuring a Ring Oscillator-Based TX & Magnetic Field-Based RX for Insertable Smart Pills. Details of the work can be found in the associated paper.

The talk was well attended and had a good Q&A session. Here are the details of my talk.

Title:
Design of Integrated Circuits

Abstract:
Integrated Circuits are ubiquitous in our society. We can find them, for instance, when we check for emails, messages, and news in our smartphones, when we watch our favorite shows, when we take the bus or drive to work/home, when we work in our computers, when we communicate with our family and friends, when we look at space, or when we need a medical procedure. The design of integrated circuits is a very important field that has transformed our society and will continue to have a huge impact in our lives.

In this talk, I will give an overview of what integrated circuits are and how they fit within a modern electronic system. I will explain the relationships they have with other areas of electrical engineering and focus on the design of electronic systems from the transistor level to the application layer. As an example of a custom integrated circuit, I will present a novel ultra-low-power transmitter for implantable and wearable medical devices.