IC design or Integrated Circuit design is a
sub-category of electronic engineering, encircling the specific logic and
circuit design techniques needed to design integrated circuits, or ICs. ICs
comprise small-scale electronic components such as resistors, transistors,
capacitors, etc. fabricated into an electrical grid on a monolithic
semiconductor.
Digital and analog IC designs are the two wide
categories of IC design. Components like microprocessors, FPGAs, different
memories (such as: RAM, ROM, and flash) and digital ASICs are produced by
digital IC design. Digital design’s main focusing points are logical rightness,
ensuring maximum circuit density, and placing circuits to ensure efficient
routing of clock and timing signals. Power IC design and RF IC design are the
fields in which Analog IC design has specialism. Analog IC design is used in
the design of phase locked loops, op-amps, oscillators, linear regulators and
active filters. Analog design bothers about the physics of the semiconductor
devices like resistance, gain, power dissipation and matching. Integrity of
analog signal amplification and filtering is generally critical and for this
reason, analog integrated circuits use comparatively bigger area active devices
than digital IC designs and commonly not so much dense in circuitry.
