With the advent of the "open foundry model" there are now many small organizations doing IC design. Add to that a lot of third party IPs that are good, bad and sometimes just ugly. While the open foundry model allows more OEM's access to custom IC’s, what is lacking is a detailed understanding of the issues.

Our Technical Oversight Services can provide you with an expert to represent your IC needs in any or all of the following areas.

IC Definition:

• What does(not) get integrated
• Cost optimization - silicon technology
• Cost optimization - circuiit architecture
• Performance trade-off analysis
• Proposed device viability and risk analysis
• Design specification, with:
  • desired blocks
  • basic pinout
  • performance parameters

Design Services Reviews:

• Technical competence
• Prior applicable experience & IP
• Track record
• EDA/CAD used
• Prior experience with particular foundries
• Capability to do silicon evaluation
• Production capability foundry-test-packaging

IP Reviews:

• Cost impacts due to size and architiecture
• Circuit architecture at the functional level
• Circuit schematics at the transistor level
• Design review material available, simulation results
• Lab characterization and testing of silicon versions
• Prior use of IP's
• Modifications to be made
• Circuit layouts