What are the steps in general to conceive an integrated circuit?

Question

Concretly.

Answer 1

When I program an FPGA, it is very similar to conceiving an integrated circuit.

I always have a set of requirements, from either a paying customer or from internal means.  The requirements tell me what the FPGA is supposed to do -- what it is supposed to control; how many pins are needed for inputs and outputs; what the clock frequency is; or if there are multiple clocks; and what the functions are inside.

I will map out block diagrams of' all the functions inside the FPGA, and map out all the pins, then make connections one the block diagram.

After making block diagrams, then I write hardware description language code to implement the functions.  I like Verilog but if I have to write in VHDL I can do that, too.  Software tools "synthesize" the code into gates, flip-flops, and connections.  

At the same time, the Verilog or VHDL code can be loaded into a simulator to simulate what the behavior of the FPGA will be.

Finally a place-and-route software tool takes the synthesized netlist and virtually creates the places where all the gates and flip-flops will go, and routes the connections between them.  

The final binary file is used to make the physical connections between the real gates and flip-flops in the integrated circuit.

The FPGA may now be validated by electrical testing.

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Answer 2

To conceive a circuit, all you have to do is imagine what it would do.

To produce a working IC, you'll need to take your idea, draw a schematic, simulate it using something like spice to find out if the idea might work, then draw it in 'electric' (link below)- where you replace every transistor in your schematic with polygons representing photomasks, simulate again - then, if you're confident, email your photomasks to a silicon foundry for etching, and wait for your chip to be produced.

Answer 3

Hey here you go there are two methods of doing it :

1. Doing it on an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit)

this is like you have an idea which you formulate into core electronic circuits like suppose you have a NAND gate IC you want to make you have to actually realize it by use of transistors    

(Core of any IC got to be transistor exceptions are resistors and inductors these have to be take seperately small capacitances are managable via semiconductor). Now which looks like the one in the figure

http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electric...

so when you have such a layout level design you take it to the fabrication units. Mind you the power management issues are real important as ASIC is costly you cannot compromise on your layout level designs. Then they give you an IC.

How is an IC made:

They take Silicon (derived from SiO2 sand come on) and then clean it with acids. These are done at very highly clean environments and you can't afford the tiniest of contamination  there as it can damage the entire product. Now do you know that a transistor is made of sandwitching Ntype and Ptype semiconducting materials. so NPN and PNP. I hope you know what transistors are and stuff. After taking a bare silicon  disk i was speaking of silicon isolation right from there i get these disks. So one of those disks are taken and they are subjected to an electron gun (more technically an ion ray machine) and then dope it to a particular material say p or ntye by taking boron and phosphorous and hence obtain these p type materials or the other. I assume you know what a mosfet is(its a transistor type). The disk (mostly Ptype)  is taken and is cleaned with acids after that they deposit silicon dioxide on places they don't want the next level of ion deposition to happen(yes it repeats) this deposition is done crudely first and then there is this method called PHOTO LITHOGRAPHY whch more or less is like cuttng off the sio2 at unwanted layers and then this disk is sent again for ion ray shooting and then we get a IC (partial one) after this they fill it with aluminium studs for the connectivity and then this is packaged into plastic packaging and soon we get an IC.

Here too as my friend suggested the top layer design is done in VHDL or VERILOG and the engineers work hard to get them down to these transistor layer designs. There are lots of tools which assist in design part etc.,

2. Method as my friend suggested is by use of FPGAs which will not result in an IC but does result in a solution that is cheap initially we actually compromise on speed power area and reliability but on bulk production first method is cheaper. Other such devices are PLAs PALs and CPLDS CPLD and FPGAs are popular due to thier logic sizes and FPGA is the best among the two. Funny part is FPGAs are also from ASIC manifacturing but have programmability allowance. Its like cousin of Microcontrollers and processors but the only difference is these are concurrent devices not sequential.