Teach you to become an excellent analog integrated circuit design engineer

How do you train a newly graduated engineer? I can only start from the field I am engaged in, analog integrated circuit design. I will provide some suggestions that are also valid in other engineering fields, and the reader can make a corresponding plan for his (her) own work.

1. Initially, graduates will be assigned to work as application engineers. Application work is the technical link between the company and the customer public. This group will answer customer calls to answer customer technical questions and help customers solve their specific problems by building various circuits in the lab without the help of technical materials or designers. Answering the phone is only half of the application work. They will develop application circuits using the company's products and write some technical articles, usually published in sales magazines such as EDN. They will write some application documents (Application Notes), which will help teach customers how to actually use the company's products. Mature (Well Developed) application departments will also write datasheets (Translator: I have never translated this word, I will translate it later), which will reduce the burden of design engineers, but also bring the company's documentation to a higher level in quality and consistency. I worked in this for my first two years in this industry. I once had a chip redesigned because it was simple. When I wrote the datasheet for this chip, I found that it did not provide enough functions for the final application. Of course, the design engineers always thought that their chips were good enough. An application engineer who is truly adapted to the job can be involved in the selection of new products.

The point of this arrangement is to teach future design engineers what to design, what customers need (not what they want), how to communicate with the factory, and general information on the market. I will not let graduates communicate directly with customers immediately. First, they will write datasheets for new products, and then ask them to build circuits in the lab that are similar to the ones that use our chips in the factory. Under the guidance of senior application engineers, we will ask him to write application documents. I believe it is very important for design engineers to develop excellent engineering writing skills.

After a few months, they can answer customer calls. I think the first few calls should be accompanied by senior engineers, and then teach the younger engineers after the call. It is very important for the engineers to be as professional and helpful as possible in front of customers to show the good image of the company. Most of us call other companies for help with product problems and only get useless repetitions.

This application work would last for 6 months full time, and then another 6 months of half day work, such as mornings, for those of us on the West Coast.

2. Extracting device models can be arranged in the next part-time work time (App in the morning, Modeling in the afternoon). In analog circuit design, it is very important to use accurate and complex model parameters to apply to the circuit simulator. In the beginning, not having a good model will make us repeat the design continuously, and most designers never have a sufficiently accurate model. As the speed of the circuit becomes faster and faster, the accuracy of the model becomes fatal. Larger companies have model parameter groups (Modeling Group) or require process development engineers to write models. In the large companies I have worked for before, I found that the data of these groups are actually not accurate. Recently, we compared the device example with the model provided by a well-known simulator company for accuracy inspection, and we found that their data was pure garbage, so we relied on ourselves to accurately extract the device model.

This is a common design requirement, and I would have young engineers work under the guidance of senior engineers, teach them some tricks in this area, and then extract parameter models from process examples. This work is also a good opportunity to immerse engineers in the various steps of the department's simulation, because the model parameters need to be constantly verified and modified by fitting the circuit simulation simulation data with the test parameters. This is a very tedious job, which involves a lot of careful measurements and calculations, so it takes about three months of part-time work to re-characterize a process. The work of extracting device models does give engineers some basic concepts: in order to fit different circuit application requirements, the limitations of devices in circuits and sizes, some of these concepts are really magical, some are very beneficial to actual technical capabilities, and these concepts can correctly evaluate the accuracy and details required in the design.

Because extracting devices is a tedious task, few design companies have accurate models of existing processes.

3. Then it is appropriate to arrange some layout work. At Elantec, many of our design engineers will complete part of the layout design of their new films, but this is very rare in the industry. The usual practice is that design engineers provide insufficient design information to layout engineers, and then argue with them over the details of the layout design, wasting a lot of time. Designers usually do not check the final layout carefully, and occasionally insist on modifying areas that should have been checked long ago. When the project cannot be completed on time, the designer will also blame the layout engineer. This happens all the time.

I would have a young engineer take over a simple layout job during the second trimester of part-time work. He would draw the layout for another design engineer and then observe the inefficiencies that accumulated on him, hoping to prevent them from happening to him in the future through his eyes. In fact, we designers find it very useful to draw our own circuits. You get a feel for what types of circuits are suitable for layout design, what is good circuit information to pass on to the layout engineer, and you will face issues such as device matching, current/power density, etc. Designers also gain the ability to estimate the layout size of the circuit before layout design. The ultimate benefit is an improved ability of engineers to manage multi-person projects.

4. The first real design work can start at the beginning of the second year. This project should be guaranteed to be successful, such as connecting the existing circuit A with the existing circuit B. This work does not require innovation, but is only for economic considerations. This is the trend of modern analog IC design: continue to carefully design successful chips and add new functions. Young engineers will be supervised by a senior engineer, who is generally the initial designer of the chip to be enhanced. Senior engineers are given the right to manage young engineers and should be responsible for the results of the project. We should not examine young engineers' project management capabilities too early, which is unfair to them. Young engineers will of course draw layouts for their own circuits, test chips, and write datasheets. This period of work is a full-time design work for 5 months, and the time waiting for the tape-out is not counted, and then there is two months of full-time testing work.

5. Now the first solo design can begin. The engineer has been taken through every step of the design except product development. Product development is when the designer (we will only call them "designers" when the chip designed by the young engineer enters mass production) takes product details from the marketing department and reorganizes these details into a definition that can be more produced on silicon. At the end of the initial product definition, the designer should be able to report the expected product specifications, functions and chip size to the company. Modifying the initial market requirements usually involves a lot of difficulties and sacrifices, which needs to be supervised by the design manager. The new project will probably inherit similar existing technologies. The young designer will be allowed to use a layout engineer here, but it should be possible to test the chip and write the datasheet for the last time.

This approach takes more than two years, but it is worth it for the company from the beginning. In the long run, the company will get a mature designer in about three years instead of the usual seven years or more. It is also a good opportunity to observe where our expected engineers will encounter difficulties without causing emotional damage to employees and affecting projects. These graduates can also decide whether design is the right path for them, and the apprenticeship process provides them with many opportunities to jump into other careers.

I like these concepts in the art profession: apprentice, apprentice and master. If you work in this industry long enough, you can get the title of "senior" or "clerk". In fact, this is the "inflation" of positions. I rarely see masters in our industry. Most of us are apprentices. I don't put a unified connotation on the form. I just want to emphasize the skills.

There are some engineers who are ready to make money for the company right out of school, but they are very rare. Most engineers are immature and need to be trained to become real engineers. For companies, this is the time to train their people and limit the failures that should not be tolerated. I worked for a very famous IC design company for 5 years. They like to brag that 20% of their profits are returned to R&D. But in fact, the organization of this company is so chaotic that most of the development projects fail. Not only is the project management chaotic, but the company also likes to "throw an engineer and a project against the wall and see which one sticks to the wall." Most of the designers thrown out are fresh graduates.

We should be guiding graduates through the apprenticeship process described above to protect their passion and energy to ensure a better industry overall for all of us.