Welcome to "The IC Design Corner"

Hello, and welcome to the inaugural post for my new blog here at EDN.  I’m very excited to join EDN as a Technical Editor, a role that I began on October 11. In a way it’s almost a homecoming for me, since the very first article that I authored as an engineer was published in EDN Magazine… back in January of 1988!

For those who do not already know me, I’ll provide a brief introduction here. You can also check out my LinkedIn profile if you’re interested in more details.

My first job after graduating from the University of Buffalo was with Texas Instruments, where I was able to achieve my goal of becoming an IC designer. That did not happen in just one step, however, as my first assignment was as a product engineer with responsibility for a 4-chip TV tuning system. I was tasked with developing the production test and identifying the source of yield problems on what was then the largest piece of silicon that TI made, a custom “channel memory” that controlled a variety of functions, both analog and digital.  That got me started in the world of mixed-signal design, a theme that has continued throughout my career.

I also worked on my first analog-to-digital converter at TI, where we “cloned” what I recall was the first monolithic 8-bit CMOS ADC, from National Semiconductor. At the time it was entirely legit to take photos and reverse engineer a competitor’s design. The Semiconductor Chip Protection Act came later. In fact, the industry relied on this type of unauthorized 2nd sourcing, because most customers would not adopt a sole-source device. We would take an array of high-magnification die photographs and assemble them like a jigsaw puzzle so that we could trace out the circuit schematic manually. When we were stumped by an odd-looking element of the layout, National was kind enough to publish the explanation at just the right time! It might have also been in EDN, I can’t remember. (The strange device was a substrate PNP used as part of a charge-pump circuit).

I ended up spending more than fifteen years designing CMOS ADCs, and that was the topic of my first article in EDN. It may amaze some of you who are too young to remember, but there was no internet back then. So sorry, that particular article is not online. I don’t think that EDN will mind, though, that I have scanned it from my personal copy. If you send me an email at mike.demler@ubm.com I’ll be happy to send a copy.

The publication of the article in EDN almost 23 years ago led to an offer to write a book on the subject.  That book, High-Speed Analog-to-Digital Conversion, is still available twenty years later. When the editor from Academic Press contacted me, he told me that the perspective he wanted was not a textbook but one engineer talking to another. How appropriate then for me to come to EDN, where our tagline is “Voice of the Engineer“.

What is the voice of the engineer that you will get here? Well, it’s the IC Design Corner, so anything related to the challenges of designing and applying semiconductors is fair game. Those of you who touch transistors more than lines of code will recognize the play on words, which is a nod to my perspective that The World is Analog.  But my focus here is much broader (see Paul Rako’s Anablog for excellent discussions on analog design).  From my start as an IC designer I’ve also spent many years in EDA; as an applications engineer, product architect, and in marketing and business development. I’ve also worked as an industry analyst, focusing primarily on the mobile wireless technology ecosystem.

Here at the IC Design Corner, I’ll cover everything from full custom design to ASICs, ASSPs, FPGAs and SoCs, EDA tools and design methodologies - from SPICE to ESL, and advanced semiconductor technologies. There’s a lot to cover, and I am looking forward to having you join in the discussion here.