Is there a divide between board level electronics engineering and ASIC design? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: TheUnnamedNewbie
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2023, 08:04:48 am
content: I have a mostly academic and high R&D background in the ASIC/millimeter wave world. I've noticed a few times that there seems to be a huge divide between people who do board level design (which most people seem to think of when they hear "electrical engineering") and ASIC/chip design. It almost feels like two entirely different sectors.Is this just me living in my R&D bubble, or do people closer to products also notice this? Any opinions/ideas?

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2023, 09:19:35 am
content: Yes there is. I generally don't accept job applications for the available PCB design jobs from people who only have experience with ASIC or what they call microelectronics. If they want to make a shift in their career, they should include a cover letter explaining.Otherwise the experience is not applicable, just like building bridges wouldn't be. In fact it makes the applicant less desirable, because if they are a senior engineer with a decade of experience, they will probably ask for salary that's in line with that, without the experience.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2023, 12:08:47 pm
content: sounds like you can get a leg up if you buy a parameter tester and learn the die probing techniques. I think there are tons of asterisks you need to deal with too related to various process deficiencies, I think depending on how they make the chip dictates a whole world of crazy DRC you need to obey that do not make sense. Like regional customs.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2023, 05:57:18 pm
content: Quote from: karpouzi9 on April 09, 2023, 04:53:21 pmWhy would youwantto increase overlap? Specialization is unavoidable given the sheer complexity of the things we do. It’s impossible for an individual to be an expert in everything. I’d rather leave chip design to chip experts and board-level engineering to board-level experts, rather than having everyone do both of them poorly.My professional background (that I have pivoted away from, just finishing my electronics technician training this semester) comes from the IT world, specifically usability/UX. And in UX, there’s the constant demand from employers for what we call “UX unicorns”, i.e. someone who not only does usability research and user interface design, but also art design and graphics production, and both front-end and back-end coding. And while I won’t say that such peopleneverexist, ones that are actuallygoodatallof those things are as rare as hen’s teeth. Consequently, businesses that aren’t big enough to need a team of people to do those things are better advised to hire an agency for their projects. Similarly, I don’t think anny electrical engineers are going to be able to be experts at all aspects of electronics engineering, from system level all the way down to silicon design. Both in UX and EE, you want everyone to know enough about the entire field to be able to communicate competently with experts in the other subdisciplines, but only be an expert in one or two themselves. I mean, when I was in UX, I found it very useful to have a solid understanding of graphic design, typography, and programming so that I could talk to graphic designers and programmers competently, but I wouldn’t want to do their jobs. Similarly, I don’t think most board-level EEs want to deal with silicon design. And probably vice versa!

author: redkitedesign
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2023, 06:49:58 pm
content: I've been involved in both. Originally PCB designer, evolved into some small ( <200 hrs) firmware/VHDL designs, and then my employer wanted me to do ASIC verifications.Well, that was a completely different job. And while I apparently did a good enough job (my boss wanted me to do more ASIC work, and less PCB work) I hated it.So yeah, there is a divide, as there should be as it are two completely different fields of play. It really is carpentry versus bricklaying. And while there are plenty of tradesmen who can do a decent job in both, they are really different!

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2023, 07:22:41 pm
content: Quote from: karpouzi9 on April 09, 2023, 06:30:31 pmWell ASIC design isn’t for me, that’s true, but dismissing my entire reply like that is rather rude and ungrateful of you.Your entire original question is predicated on the assumption that ASIC and board level EEsareinterchangeable, and that the only reason we’d want to make themappeardistinct is to manipulate wages. I don’t think you’ve considered the possibility that they actuallyaren’tinterchangeable. That’s why I wrote “letters” to you explaining my position with why I think what I think, and what characteristics Iwouldlook for in an employee and why.Also, I asked you the very real question of why you think merging the two disciplines is actually desirable to begin with. I’d be curious for your answer.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2023, 09:27:06 pm
content: "ASIC design" is microelectronics, it's of course part of EE but as a specialization as others have said.The "divide" is that it's two different activities. Analogies have their limits, but it's a bit like comparing a web front-end software developer with someone developing firwmare in assembly.Is it software in both cases? Sure. Do you expect one to be able to do the job of the other? Usually not, unless they have managed to master both. Which is not as common.So it's largely a high-level/low-level kind of divide. Not sure what kind of opinion you are after though?Yes these are two pretty different activities with a different mindset and different tools, even though it's electronics in both cases.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2023, 10:26:33 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on April 09, 2023, 05:57:18 pmIt also depends on what part of chip design you are doing. Likely most of the people involved in designing chips don't have to care about the physics parts of transistors but 'only' create circuits from existing parts. My EE study was very biased towards analog and digital ASIC design and I had to design 2 chips during my study. The chip design workflow was based on using parts from libraries. From what I was taught, you are not going to develop your own transistors but you use standard parts that where created for the particular chip process (size & technology). From the standard transistors and/or logic gates you create blocks of components (where digital parts like lookup-tables, etc can be auto-generated). Once you have simulated the functionality to an extend that you have good test coverage, you put the blocks on a chip and wire them up. Much like you'd do with putting parts on a PCB and making the connections. Once that is done, you extract the circuit from the chip which now includes all the parasitic capacitances and resistance from the 'wiring' and verify the design.This workflow is pretty similar to creating a PCB using off the shelve parts. However, due to the high mask costs and long turnaround times you can't create so many prototypes so circuit simulation is the biggest part of the job in order to make sure the chip works the first time. Too tedious and way too little hands-on for my taste though.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2023, 10:47:39 pm
content: There is a difference. But not a divide. There are skills that span across both areas. And others that are very specific to each area. Just like other areas that are different but the same. Power electronics. Audio. So the divide is an arbitrary selection of a point on a gradient.The divide is changing over time. When I started my career a flip-flop or ring counter were board (or chassis) level designs. Now they hardly rate as a component and things that used to a take a cabinet full of boards are put on a single chip.One skill that applies across the entire spectrum is the whole specification, application, interface and cost integration job - often called system engineering. It is also a skill that is usually in high demand. Note that there are many titled and trained as systems engineers, but relatively few that are actually good at it. This skill is not necessarily a good key to getting a board level assignment. The perception is that the total value proposition of a board doesn't demand much of this tasking, which is correct. But rounding this to zero is often the action which results from the perception and is wrong. The skill would be just part of what a good board designer uses, and would be among the things that differentiate a good one from an average or bad one.

author: TheUnnamedNewbie
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 11, 2023, 07:17:29 am
content: Quote from: karpouzi9 on April 10, 2023, 07:06:52 amI mean part of that is already a thing. A lot of companies don't design their own in-house I2C, HDMI, ethernet, ESD, whatever. You buy/license them from companies like Rambus, Synopsis, Cadence, etc...The problem ends up being the high up-front cost to tapeout. Even if the design was cheap (sometimes these IPs are paid in a per-die-manufactuerd way so little upfront cost in the design), taping out a chip in a <100 nm technology is going to have up-front costs ranging from 1 million USD to many million USD, just to have your maskset made. You need a huge volume to make up for that.Ofcouse, you can make chips in older technologies too, and a lot of times this is what they do for true ASICs (I mean, a customer goes to an ASIC designhouse and asks for a very specific chip for a single product). But unless you have huge volume, it is just not feasible (and it is high risk!)To come back to the original question/topic:Quote from: SiliconWizard on April 09, 2023, 09:27:06 pmI think this is a good analogy to use.A place where I see more and more overlap is when you get to anything high-speed/high-frequency, because in a lot of those situations you are constrained by pretty much every single thing in the signal path. So the people working on the 112 Gbit/s serdes need to understand what the limitations are for each part of the chain. At least the system level guys do, those who come up with the standards and architectures. Though now that I think about it, once those (usually research) engineers paved the way, the guys following just have a standard to follow and I guess don't really need to know what is going on anymore.