Teardown & Cost Analysis Engineer

Project

Work done for a product or program.

• Decapsulate, delayer and cross-section packaged devices and image them with optical, SEM and TEM to reconstruct process and design features.
• Extract process node characteristics including gate pitch, metal pitch, fin or nanosheet geometry, SRAM bitcell area and DRAM or NAND cell structure.
• Reconstruct die floorplans and identify IP blocks, core counts, cache hierarchy, SerDes lanes and analog macros from imaging and layout analysis.
• Analyse advanced packaging construction such as CoWoS interposers, HBM stacks, TSVs, hybrid bonding, fan-out RDL layers and substrate build-up.
• Build bottom-up bill-of-materials and manufacturing cost models covering wafer cost, yield assumptions, die per wafer, test cost, assembly and packaging.
• Produce competitive comparison reports mapping cost, area efficiency and architecture choices across rival parts.
• Support IP infringement and patent-claim evidence work by documenting structures against asserted claim language with imaging evidence.
• Maintain the lab's sample preparation recipes, contamination control and imaging calibration standards.
• Brief clients on findings and defend cost assumptions line by line against their own internal cost models.

Function

Work that keeps the discipline running: methods, tools, suppliers and people.

• Benchmark measured silicon against the vendor's public claims and flag discrepancies in node, die size, memory configuration or content.

Project

1. Produce and hand over the role's key deliverables
   • Teardown report with die photos, delayered imagery and floorplan annotation
   • Process characterisation report with measured critical dimensions
   • Bottom-up bill-of-materials and manufacturing cost model
   • Advanced packaging construction analysis
   • Competitive benchmarking comparison deck
   • Patent claim-chart evidence packages
2. Run research projectsGeneral
   • Define hypotheses and experiments
   • Build test structures or models
   • Analyse and report the results
3. Transfer resultsGeneral
   • Hand findings over to development
   • Support early adoption

Function

1. Stay currentGeneral
   • Review the literature
   • Work with universities and consortia
2. Protect and shareGeneral
   • File invention disclosures
   • Publish where allowed