Yes, it would be nice if MOSIS and/or TSMC had Electric support files
for TSMC180. I have never tried to contact MOSIS and TSMC about it. It
sounds like you contacted them such that is unfortunate to hear that
they don't have the support files at this time.
The NDA is perhaps a bit restrictive to academia (such as undergraduate
programs). There has been some discussions in this Electric group about
possibly using something like FreePDK [
https://www.eda.ncsu.edu/wiki/FreePDK ]. However, I have not heard of
anyone making any progress with it. So, it likely has the same problem
currently of also not having Electric support files for it.
Electric is just a hobby for me at this time. So, I have no funds for
trying to realize Electric designs through a fab.
Back in about 2014-2015, I was looking for a job in the semiconductor
industry where my Master of Science graduate course experience with VLSI
(Electric) could be utilized. At least at that time, I don't remember
finding any company looking for experience with Electric. Most, if not
all, of the job descriptions I believe were looking for experience with
Cadence. I ended up in a different field of work, such that VLSI is not
used in my daily work.
It looks like the following job descriptions are recent and are looking
for Cadence experience:
https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=a18865e4b8a4186f&tk=1cquu9ftcaf16800&from=serp&alid=3&advn=7496584984632316
https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=9f116d069fbc2f55&tk=1cquu970nb955802&from=serp&vjs=3
https://www.monster.com/jobs/q-circuit-design-engineer-jobs.aspx?jobid=200327225
So industry's tools of choice for VLSI might not have changed much since
a few years ago. I don't have any VLSI contacts at companies such as
Intel, Micron, ON Semiconductor, and IBM to confirm it, but there may be
some relation of there being support files for Cadence but not Electric.
I think Electric VLSI experience should not be ignored, but if you can
expose your students to Cadence as well, it might be beneficial for
their resumes.
Perhaps you have already done so, if not, it might be worthwhile to see
what Cadence has to offer for their university software program:
https://www.cadence.com/content/cadence-www/global/en_US/home/services/cadence-academic-network/university-software-program.html
The university that I attended in the past, we had our own fabrication
tools for e-beam lithography [ https://caf.ua.edu/instrumentation/ ] &
photolithography, etching, and deposition [ http://mff.ua.edu/ ]. Back
then, I don't recall it every being developed or setup to use Electric's
VLSI in-house without having go to MOSIS, which would have been nice.
It has been years since then, so I wonder if they have that capability
now. I suspect other universities have similar equipment. I don't know
for sure, but I thought MOSIS might be or have started out as a
university's cleanroom. Maybe that university is the "USC Information
Sciences Institute" seen on the MOSIS contact page [
https://www.mosis.com/support/contact-us ].
Your undergraduate programs having VLSI courses that as I recall wasn't
able to take until graduate school as it usually didn't seem to make it
into the ABET set of courses several years ago sounds excellent. I
think your students will be coming out ahead unless that has become the
norm now.
Best Regards,
Gavin
On 10/28/2018 6:46 PM, Kim Cornett wrote:
Thanks Gavin for the response. I do have the NDA permissions with
MOSIS and TSMC which got me started down this rabbit hole.
It sure would be nice if someone had developed the Electric support
files for TSMC180 to share them with MOSIS so it can be used by others
in the future. Unfortunately with our course's short timeline, we
won't have time to write/troubleshoot getting TSMC's Design Rules
implemented in Electric. For undergraduate programs without access to
the commercial software (like ours), it mostly eliminates the
fabrication opportunity; The only SCMOS process through MOSIS (C5N)
runs on a 26 week turn around and all our seniors will have graduated
before the chips would get back.
Hoping I'll have time in the future to get TSMC running on Electric...
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