* Question
| Why is the device size smaller and not always better? |
* Answer
| For more than 30 years, electronics engineers have long believed that the main way to design smaller, faster, and cheaper electronic devices is semiconductor integration, and lithography that is moving toward more and more sophisticated directions is becoming more integrated.For most of the 1990s, analog circuit design engineers liked the lithography process that followed digital circuits, but in the late 1990s, things began to change.For lithography processes below 0.5μm, the maximum allowable supply voltage is also reduced.In addition, device geometries tend to be smaller and smaller, resulting in ever-increasing manufacturing costs.With the development of the times, electronic engineers must change the way of thinking about product development.In some cases, analog and digital circuits cannot continue along the same shrinking path.This new design principle is called smart segmentation and it involves several principles: recognizing that some analog applications are due to the economics of manufacturing or the need to drive real-world loads like coaxial cable or twisted-pair telephone lines.It is impractical to be lower than the current supply voltage.Smart segmentation minimizes interface bandwidth by placing as many digital processing circuitry as possible on a separate analog chip, so high-speed data streams do not have to be transmitted off-chip.In the best practical design, off-chip data streaming can be done over the serial bus, which saves pin count.Existing designs are utilized when unexpected low yields make the design of an application specific Integrated Circuits(ICs) (ASIC) impractical.Choose the highest level of integration available and complete the design using a field programmable gate array (FPGA).To study the external passive components needed to complete a new product.Smart segmentation does not mean that design engineers must go back to the 90s when the digital functions were placed on one chip, the analog functions were placed on another chip, and the memory was placed in a design pattern within the third chip.The device size is not incapable of being smaller, but the smaller and smaller device size will limit the number of applications.Smart segmentation frees design engineers from the devices that are only available from the configuration vendor to create new products.It eliminates rigid thinking and a hard-won way of solving problems.Companies that master smart segmentation will be technologically unique by leveraging their design, manufacturing, and software development capabilities. |
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