Many newcomers to the IC industry don’t know whether to choose verification or design. Below, IC Cultivation Academy will analyze it for you from the aspects of skills, thresholds, etc.
What is a digital front-end design engineer?
Integrated Circuit design (IC for short) is generally divided into digital IC design, analog IC design and digital-analog hybrid IC design.
Digital IC design is generally further subdivided into front-end design (Front-end Design) and back-end design (Backend Design).
The work of front-end digital IC engineers generally includes writing circuit specifications (Spec.), designing circuit architecture, circuit implementation and verification, synthesizing a circuit netlist (netlist) that meets the requirements, and finally submitting the netlist to certain work specifications. Backend department.
What is a digital IC verification engineer?
Before answering this question, we need to first sort out the process of chip birth. The birth of a chip can be roughly divided into: design link → manufacturing link → packaging and testing link.
Verification runs through the entire chip design process, starting from the initial stages of chip design, to code implementation, to before and after tape-out. The job of the verification engineer is to find out the potential defects of the product as much as possible before the product is put into production, and to conduct layer-by-layer self-test and verification activities. It can definitely be regarded as strength and "responsibility".
What skills do IC front-end design engineers generally need to master?
1. The first requirement is to be able to read documents
You need to understand the spec document to know what the design requirements are, you need to understand the EDA tool documentation to use various EDA tools, and you need to understand the IP document to know how to put IP into your own chip.
Front-end design engineers spend nearly half of their time reading various documents. A large number of documents are written in English. If your English is not good, it will be difficult to move forward. In addition, you must have certain technical background support, such as computer working principles, digital and analog circuits. Otherwise, it is still a bunch of English letters, and I still don’t understand what it is saying.
2. The second requirement is to use the Linux operating system
Chip design is mostly developed in the Linux environment, and Windows is rarely used. You must be familiar with how to edit and manage stored code files, how to call EDA tools, how to write scripts, and how to use scripts to automatically handle more complex tasks.
3. The third one is to be able to read and write RTL code.
The most commonly used one now is Verilog. You must be able to understand what the hardware behavior described by Verilog is and what the corresponding circuit is. This is the biggest difference between our chip design engineers and software programmers. In the end, it must be implemented into the circuit.
These three abilities are the most important abilities for front-end design engineers.
What skills do verification engineers need?
1. Master the basic knowledge
Digital circuit knowledge is definitely the foundation of the foundation. There is also Linux that needs to be mastered.
2. Master relevant languages
Needless to say, C/C++ language, SV language and scripting language (perl/python) all need to be mastered. Especially the SV language, most verification environments are implemented based on SV.
3. Familiar with verification tools
UVM verification methodology and waveform simulation EDA software (VCS, Verdi, Xcelium) are all basic skills that need to be mastered for verification. Studying and researching well can also improve your simulation and debugging efficiency.
4. Understand the algorithm/protocol
What the chip wants to achieve is nothing more than a certain algorithm and a certain protocol. The algorithm/protocol is the soul of the chip. Verification is actually to verify whether the algorithm/protocol implementation is correct.
5. Have verification consciousness
Compared with the previous items, consciousness seems a bit ethereal and abstract. But for a verification engineer, verification awareness is very important. It can be simply understood as "obsessive-compulsive disorder". I don't let go of any bugs. I always have a questioning attitude, get to the bottom of the problem, try to extend it upstream and downstream, and cooperate well with engineers in other links.
The difference between IC verification engineer and IC design engineer
IC design engineers are more hardware-oriented and only need Verilog language, but the focus is on a deep understanding of the design field and project experience
IC design engineers do not need to know much about the chip verification field, and verification engineers also need to have a certain understanding of design
IC verification engineers often have the opportunity to transition to design. During the debugging process, they gradually understand the design and sometimes need to give modification opinions.
IC verification engineers not only collaborate closely with design engineers, but also sometimes interact with back-end and software engineers
IC design engineers focus on how the functional structure is converted into circuit implementation, while IC verification engineers focus on whether the circuit level conforms to the functional scenario.
IC design engineers have a deeper learning depth, and IC verification engineers have a wider learning breadth. In other words, verification engineers are easier to change careers than design engineers (referring to project areas, such as radio frequency, communications, CPU)
Although verification will also care about the design, we are more concerned about function points and performance. In addition to function and performance, design colleagues also care about area, power consumption, timing paths, temperature inversion, etc.
First of all, no matter what your professional background is, the threshold for verification engineers is generally lower than that for designers.
The above is an introduction to IC design and verification positions. If you still don’t know how to choose a position, or want to know about the position, employment, and salary, any questions about the IC industry will be answered by teachers.
Here is an entry: IC Entry Guide