High speed and low power embedded processors are used frequently in today's high performance networking and communication systems, digital consumer electronics, and office automation applications. It is extremely important for the equally fast I/O and multiprocessor busses to keep pace with them so as to enable an effective product solution. This report is intended to be a quick reference for a high level understanding of bus architectures, the most widely used data transmission standards and I/O bus solutions. It also includes an extensive glossary and set of references for further research.

It is well known that talented product planners and engineers can achieve tremendous savings in time and money through their knowledge of the workflows and relationships in the integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing supply chain. This document describes the "prototype" and "mass production" workflows based on typical durations for the purposes of discussing Work-in-Progress (WIP) tracking and optimization. Written from the perspective of a fabless ASIC provider, this paper proposes that WIP tracking can reduce the cycle time from GDSII tape-out to the delivery of packaged and tested chips.

It is becoming very clear that outsourcing of the back-end manufacturing operations part of the IC development flow is economically beneficial to fabless semiconductor companies of all sizes. By outsourcing post-GDSII operations, fabless companies can concentrate on their core competency, which is chip design, by reallocating their costs from non-core competency skills to differentiating skills. The goal of this White Paper is to paint a realistic picture of the complexities of manufacturing operations in the era of deep sub-micron CMOS, and dispel certain simplistic notions about the back-end manufacturing flow.

Outsourcing is a concept that has a long positive history although the birth of each outsourcing phenomenon was not without pain. This whitepaper will discuss and explain the reasons why manufacturing operations outsourcing is a good business decision for many semiconductor companies. The whitepaper closes with a case study highlighting how a representative semiconductor company can focus on product innovation and new market creation and at the same time improve its financial strength through manufacturing operations outsourcing.

When IC devices are produced and shipped to end customers, it is important that they will function as specified in the application environment. This paper outlines strategies and practices used to statistically sample, and predict how a device will operate over time. The practices outlined are believed to be best in class techniques for a successful product launch. These strategies most likely will point to sensitivities in devices that cause intermittent failures or process weaknesses which cause hard failures. If all of the outlined methods are not done in the preproduction phase, it may be necessary for failures to be analyzed later to prevent such occurrences in the future.