Physical Design Tech
The Physical Design Technician role (also commonly known as a "mask designer") is most often in support of the physical design engineer. The PD tech will typically receive a routed layout from the engineer and will proceed to complete many of the manual edits which may be required. This will include fixing LVS problems, correcting DRC issues, creating power busses and grids, and basically preparing the design to be released to the mask-shop.Often, a PD tech will need to complete these steps multiple times as the design receives ECOs (Engineering Change Orders) which are corrections and changes to the chip's circuits. After each ECO, the design will have new DRC/LVS errors and other problems which must be corrected. This cycle can occur dozens of times depending on the quality of the design engineers deliverables and whether they accounted for many of the design's challenges in their initial netlist or instead chose to simple "get something out" with plans on revising ("revving") it at a later point.
The PD tech will usually not interface with external customers but rather leave that task to the PDE. As such, the PD tech's role is often well-defined and lacks unpredictable stresses, such as dealing directly with external customers or incompetent designers. However, as the last-stop before a design is released, the tech will often find themselves being hurried to complete their steps once the designers have deemed that there are no more changes required to the chip. This can be stressful, but often involves overtime which can be a financial boon for the tech.
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