John Ferguson

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John Ferguson is the product management director for Calibre nmDRC applications at Siemens Digital Industries Software. He has extensive experience in physical verification, including the extension of traditional physical design and verification techniques to such fields as 3DIC and package layout, silicon photonics, quantum computing, and more. Ferguson holds several patents and has authored multiple industry publications. He earned a B.Sc. degree in Physics from McGill University, an M.Sc. in Applied Physics from the University of Massachusetts, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology.

Author's Latest Posts

The 3D-IC Multiphysics Challenge Dictates A Shift-Left Strategy

By John Ferguson - 25 Apr, 2024 - Comments: 0

As the industry marches forward in a 3D-IC centric design approach (figure 1), we are facing a new problem. Sometimes referred to as “electro-thermal” or “electro-thermo-mechanical,” it really is the confluence of multiple forms of physics exerting impacts on both the physical manufacture and structure of these multi-die designs and their electrical behavior. Fig. 1: Illustration... » read more

Help, 3D-IC Is Stuck In A Country Song

By John Ferguson - 30 Nov, 2023 - Comments: 0

Every time I focus on three-dimensional (3D) integrated circuit (IC) design, I start hearing the Luke Bryan song “Rain Makes Corn, Corn Makes Whiskey.” Not because I need a strong drink to work with 3D-IC designs, but because there is a similar, although slightly more complicated, series of cause and effect issues that impact 3D-ICs. Pushing electrons through very thin metal wires and switc... » read more

Let’s Do The (IC Design) Time Warp Again

By John Ferguson - 26 Oct, 2023 - Comments: 0

For the most part, we’ve all been doing integrated circuit (IC) and system-on-chip (SoC) layout the same way for decades. Designers put together the design, be it intellectual property (IP), block, or full chip, then begin running physical verification. For design rule checking (DRC), this process consists of running all appropriate rule checks for the component on all available layouts. The ... » read more

The Process Design Kit: Protecting Design Know-How

By John Ferguson - 08 Nov, 2018 - Comments: 2

Once upon a time, integrated circuits (ICs) were built by the same companies that designed them. The design of an IC was tightly integrated with the manufacturing processes available within each company. In these days, when designs contained hundreds of transistors, companies modeled each feature in an IC at a first principles level, meaning each transistor or fundamental device was analyzed an... » read more