Abstract: A method of fabricating integrated circuits includes the steps of: a) with reference to a physical design of a hardware unit, preparing an integrated circuit component mask layout set associated with component photomasks suitable for fabricating an array of the hardware units on a wafer; b) preparing the component photomasks with reference to the integrated circuit component mask layout set; c) forming the array of the hardware units and interconnections between adjacent hardware units on the wafer using the component photomasks prepared in step b) ; and d) cutting the wafer along selected ones of the scribe lines so as to form a plurality of integrated circuit dies. Each of the integrated circuit dies is independently selected from a single-type including only one of the hardware units, and a multi-type including a plurality of the hardware units that are interconnected electrically via uncut ones of the conductive paths.

Abstract: The variable gain amplifier of the present invention includes at least an operation amplifier. By choosing one of output stages, a feedback resistor is selected and the gain of the variable gain amplifier is decided according to the resistance of the selected feedback resistor, as desired. By adjusting the gain of the variable gain amplifier, the received signals can be amplified or attenuated in accordance with design requirement. The variable gain amplifier can include a two-stage architecture, in which a first stage is used for coarse gain adjustment and a second stage is used for fine gain adjustment. The gain of the two-stage variable gain amplifier can be easily adjusted to a desired value.