©Mark Perry 2000
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Chips
What are chips, and what involved in production?
The protection of Integrated Circuit technologies
A blend of copyright and patent
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Lets go really small
Most ICs use half a million electrons to represent
a bit, but
– new devices down to the 1 electron level
– socalled quantum devices
– two -> 1 -> zero dimensional devices?
– problems in our legal definintions
– = devices 1/10,000 in size
Let’s ignore these for today! ‘Odinary’
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IC
IC production
production
IC system
Masks
definition
Working
IC
Data for
Wafers
layout
Design Fabrication
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All about chips
More than 100 steps
Main features in chip production
– Grow crystal
– Prepare wafer
– Get circuits into wafer by oxidation, masking, etching, doping,
dielectric deposition, metallization and passivation.
– Test, chop, check, package
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First design your circuits
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and...
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workout a layout
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make a mask
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Description of a five level
lithography process
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get a circuit in the chip
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Inspecting a wafer
Maybe hundreds of chips
on the wafer
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The chip product before
packaging
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Power PC
601
closeup
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Memory chips
– packaged and
– assembled as
– SIMMs
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Huge
Huge investment
investment
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Layout designs legislative protection
Why special protection?
US Semiconductor Chip Protection Act 1984
– Gunboat legislation?
– World production statistics
TRIPS
ICTA
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AA little
little history
history
US dominated 1970s production
Late 70s early 80s – piracy?
– reverse engineering mask work from sample chips
– Intel believed costing them tens of millions /year
Limited protection from IP laws
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Semiconductor
Semiconductor Chip
Chip Protection
Protection
The US act was followed by Japan, UK and so
on.....
Arguably this legislation is now redundant
• Direct copying no longer practical
• CAD tools eliminated need for dirct copying
• Production is now so complex that having the mask is not much
help!
– Processes not protected
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Integrated
Integrated Circuit
Circuit Topography
Topography Act
Act 1990
1990
Irrelevant?
Great example of sui generis legislation
Interesting copyright/patent hybrid
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"Integrated circuit product"
"integrated circuit product" means a product, in a
final or intermediate form, that is intended to
perform an electronic function and in which the
elements, at least one of which is an active
element, and some or all of the interconnections,
are integrally formed in or on, or both in and on, a
piece of material
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Topography
Topography
means the design, however expressed, of the
disposition of
– (a) the interconnections, if any, and the elements for the
making of an integrated circuit product, or
– (b) the elements, if any, and the interconnections for the
making of a customization layer or layers to be added to an
integrated circuit product in an intermediate form.
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Operation of the ICTA
Have to register within 2 years of ‘commercial
exploitation’ s4
Reproduction right s3(2)(a)
Manufacturing right s3(2)(b)
Importation & exploitation right s3(2)©
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Limitations on rights
s3(3) Nothing in this section confers any rights in
relation to any idea, concept, process, system,
technique or information that may be embodied
in a topography or an integrated circuit product.
S6(2) No infringement...
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Think of applications of ICTA
Not only just for chips:
– Algorithms as circuits?
Note © maintained for soft on chip
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Firmware, microcode
Hardwiring v Microprogramming
– H: a network of logic circuits that directly implement a piece
object code
– M: control signals in ROM that instruct the microprocessor to
execute the object code
Mostly microcode used now
Microcode can be regarded as software on chip
(usually ROM/PROM/EEPROM/etc)
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Note CA s.64.2
Exclusion of ‘topographies’ from provisions of
the Copyright Act
Note 64.2(2)
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?Queries
?Queries on
on IC
IC designs¿
designs¿
Small problem for you to think on...
– SCPA refers to ‘semiconductor chips’ whereas ICTA refers to
‘topography’ ...
• Does this difference matter?
– Topography
– ICTA - what about quantum devices?
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