Production Support

IDEAS takes responsibility for the production of their ASIC designs and detector products.
The supported work items include:

ASIC Production
IDEAS provides and manages the following production services for their ASIC designs

  • Selection of the semiconductor foundry
  • Selection and foundry specific ASIC design integration for MPW, MLM, or full wafers
  • Specification of dicing/cutting, wafer thinning and other production options
  • Design verification related to tape-out and review of foundry verification results
  • Review of foundry test results
  • Wafer inspection and lot acceptance tests (LAT)
  • Wafer and chip handling and storage
IDEAS works with global semiconductor foundries to produce any quantity of ASIC devices (chips). The ASIC development process outputs a relatively small number of chip prototype devices (10 to 100 chips), which can be sufficient for clients and their projects. Furthermore IDEAS can have any larger quantity produced and reproduced upon order to a foundry. The quality and maturity of the foundry process assures a reproducible production or reproduction from prototype design files or prototyping masks at the foundry. The desired quantity of chips may range from only one to millions per year. IDEAS helps finding a cost effective solution producing the desired quantity of chips. Small quantities are produced on multi-project wafers (MPW) or with multi-layer masks (MLM). The MPWs share several designs and MLMs share several process steps. For large quantities IDEAS uses full wafer production with only one design per wafer. The optimal solution depends on the ASIC design size and production quantity.

Packaging of Bare Dice
IDEAS provides and manages the packaging of bare dice of their ASIC designs

  • Specification of the package requirements based on customer input (compliance with standards, package type, lid type, die-attach, electronic bonding)
  • Selection of the packaging house
  • Wafer dicing and handling of wafers and chips
  • Packaged die inspection, tests, and acceptance

System Production
IDEAS provides and manages the detector system production of their detector designs.