Hi, I am an E&E graduate as well and have been working for over a year. So far honestly what you guys have been discussing is something i am totally lost since I majored mostly in semiconductors. Even working as a R&D engineer, I hardly use any of those bits of electronics knowledge.

As for Discrete Signal processing, I think I can still remember some bits of my old Digital signal processing lectures though. Any questions about that?

Wow your uni has some sponsors? Pretty cool, I didn't know your uni could just send a design to get it fabricated somewhere else.

As for me, since my uni was the national centre for III-V semiconductors, we pretty much had our own fabrication lab, right from the diamond saw that slices the ingots to MOCVDs till the ion implanters, the full works. And yes, the cost of fabricating our samples costed each student around 700pounds but that is all already included in our fees.

Yes do a google search and you can find all of the information you need. Manual soldering is just soldering done manually either you are using a soldering iron, double soldering irons or even a blower.

Wave soldering,
http://www.tkb-4u.com/articles/soldering/p...m/procparam.php

Soldering is basically attempting to connect parts to boards or other parts. Each technique differs to the process. So it is not always the name of the soldering or the method but more of the process it is supposed to go through such as when soldering components through SMT machines or down back to the manual soldering.

Also different techniques are done for different components such as discrete, chip, ICs, components that come in different packages (tape, tray, etc..).

ikanayam, haha that is art? LOL. If only they hung pictures like that in the Lourve, then I could have related better rather than the new abstract and modern art pictures.

I've seen the drawings done by my PWB specialist in my company and when the final 6 layer board is completed, now that is true art Its so complicated that it blows me away haha

As some people like to see the architecture as an art, to me personally I think the IC itself and the fabrication techniques are a work of art. Since coming from a solid state major in uni, I think the whole atomic physics of ICs are itself brilliant and mind boggling!

If we knew the complete architecture of those chips, everyone could be producing the same processors.

There are several possibilities for the difference. Some of them may be processing techniques, others may be the entire core itself. It all depends on the design and processing technique used for these processors.

Some of them could come from the same wafer but cannot pass certain tests under rated speed so they usually down clock the processor and sell them off cheaper. A good example would be AMD Thoroughbred chips whereby their immense overclockability was because these chips were actually Athlon XP 2800+ or 3000+ but couldn't keep to spec under those speeds so they were sold as XP 1700+ or 1800+