Software engineer in chip company ?

[nitu]

Hi..

I have been to conference recently and met people working on ASICs. All of them shared that ASIC development team now has large number of software engineers(approx 50%). I not sure why will they need so many software engineers. Is it for embedded software development or application development or for some EDA stuff ? Kindly share your thoughts or inputs.

Thanks

 

[Chethan]

Hi Netu,

Most of the work in ASIC is getting automated. Lots of scripts are being used for work simplification in the entire ASIC flow at every stages. Hence a lot of people who are conversant with various scripting languages are required nowadays in any ASIC company.

regards
Chethan

 

[nitu]

Hi Chethan,

Thanks for the reply. It means that Software engineers referred by the chip industry are the engineers who understand the scripting language for EDA tools. Is this correct ?

 

[Syswip]

Software engineer can also do a lot of verification job.

 

[Chethan]

Hi Nitu,

Yes. Software engineers in the VLSI industry are the ones who are familiar with scripting languages like PERL and TCL. So much of automation has hit the ASIC flow that even hardcore VLSI engineers are forced to learn any of scripting languages these days. When the ASIC industry was in 180nm and 250nm our dependencies on scripting languages were very less. The number of views used in the flow was also less. But now when the ASIC industry is at 65nm/45 nm the number of views being used has increased because of mos scaling problems. This has made our dependencies on EDA tools, and scripts which make these eda tools work according to our way , has increased.

regards
Chethan

 

[D_ic]

I'd say that most of them are involved in developing the Model of the asic that's confronted with RTL in the Verification.

Model is in general ObjectOriented language like SystemC (a kind of C++) or even Matlab scripts. The big is the ASIC, the big will the RTL code and the Model Code and you need a good/big team for both in almost the same number of people.