How do chip design engineers make sure that there is no interference between different circuit modules due to electromagnetic fields, given that every circuit component is very close to each other?
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Hi, I design specialized high frequency chips for a living where this is an especially major challenge. I’ll try to stay true to ELI5 explanations.
In my line of work, we use full 3D simulation software with high power computers to test chips virtually before we send designs out to be built. There are lots of different ways and software packages that do this, each with their own advantages and disadvantages that I could talk about for hours but that wouldn’t be a conversation for ELI5. We at my company spend tens of thousands of dollars every year on these software packages and devote extremely high performance computers exclusively to this task.
In most applications at lower frequencies, they do something simpler and faster, where coupling factors are extracted between critical nodes and placed into a circuit diagram using a circuit component called a capacitor. There is then a whole array of capacitors interconnecting between the critical nodes which can then be used to loosely simulate performance to a lesser degree of accuracy that works just fine below a few GHz of operating frequency.
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