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•8:20 AM
.:: Very large scale options with VLSI ::.

Most of the students of Electronics Engineering are exposed to Integrated Circuits (IC's) at a very basic level, involving SSI (small scale integration) circuits like logic gates or MSI (medium scale integration) circuits like multiplexers, parity encoders etc. But there is a lot bigger world out there involving miniaturization at levels so great, this is the world of VLSI- Very Large Scale Integration.

Software Engineers taking over hardware design:

Application -Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) provide the path to creating miniature devices that can do a lot of diverse functions. But what we need to develop is a large number of people who can design these IC's. This is where we realise that we cross the threshold between a chip designer and a systems designer at a higher level. Does a person designing a chip really need to know every minute detail of the IC manufacturing process? Can there be tools that allow a designer to simply create design specifications that get translated into hardware specifications? The solution to this is rather simple - hardware compilers or silicon compilers as they are called. We know by now, that there exist languages like VHDL which can be used to specify the design of a chip. What if we had a compiler that converts a high level language into a VHDL specification? The potential of this technology is tremendous - in simple manner, we can convert all the software programmers into hardware designers!


Institutes offering the course

Post Graduate Degree:

If you wish to pursue post graduate degree here in India you need to take up GATE (conducted by Indian Institute of Technology on the second Sunday of every February) in Electrical Engineer-ing/Computer Engineer-ing. Then after clearing GATE you can apply for MTech course. There are different specializations available at each IIT school.

Post Graduate Diploma

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) offers 2 Diploma courses for Electronics/ Electrical Engineers or Engineers of related branches who want to make a career in digital IC designing. The courses are of short duration and not in-depth like Degree courses obliviously but good ones to enter this field. C-DAC's Advanced Computing Training School (ACTS) is dedicated to creating high quality manpower in IT through a network of more than 100 Authorized Training Centres (ATC) in India, besides C-DAC's own centres in Pune, Delhi, Hyderabad & Bangalore.

Job profiles for VLSI Engineers

Design Engineer:

Takes specifications, defines architecture, does circuit design, runs simulations, supervises layout, tapes out the chip to the foundry, evaluates the prototype once the chip comes back from the fab.

Product Engineer:

Gets involved in the project during the design phase, ensures manufacturability, develops characterization plan, assembly guidelines, develops quality and reliability plan, evaluates the chip with the design engineer, evaluates the chip through characterization, reliability qualification and manufacturing yield point of view (statistical data analysis). He is responsible for production release and is therefore regarded as a team leader on the project. Post production, he is responsible for customer returns, failure analysis, and corrective actions including design changes.

Test Engineer:

Develops test plan for the chip based on specifications and data sheet, creates characterization and production program for the bench test or the ATE (Automatic Test Equipment), designs test board hardware, correlates ATE results with the bench results to validate silicon to compare with simulation results. He works closely with the product engineer to ensure smooth release to production and post release support.

Applications Engineer:

Defines new products from the system point of view at the customer's end, based on marketing input. His mission is to ensure the chip works in the system designed or used by the customers, and complies with appropriate standards (such as Ethernet, SONET, WiFi etc.). He is responsible for all customer technical support, firmware development, evaluation boards, data sheets and all product documentation such as application notes, trade shows, magazine articles, evaluation reports, software drives and so on.

Process Engineer:

This is a highly specialized function which involves new wafer process development, device modeling, and lots of research and development projects. There are no quick rewards on this job! If you are R&D oriented, highly trained in semiconductor device physics area, do not mind wearing bunny suits (the clean room uniforms used in all fabs), willing to experiment, this job is for you.

Packaging Engineer:

This is another highly specialized job function. He develops precision packaging technology, new package designs for the chips, does the characterization of new packages, and does electrical modeling of the new designs.

CAD Engineer:

This is an engineering function that supports the design engineering function. He is responsible for acquiring, maintaining or developing all CAD tools used by a design engineer. Most companies buy commercially available CAD tools for schematic capture, simulation, synthesis, test vector generation, layout, parametric extraction, power estimation, and timing closure; but in several cases, these tools need some type of customization. A CAD engineer needs to be highly skilled in the use of these tools, be able to write software routines to automate as many functions as possible and have a clear understanding of the entire design now.

Companies offering JOBS for VLSI graduates:

For the people who have passion for Chip Designing and want to learn it in India you need not get disappointed. Though major job opportunities are available in US nowadays all big companies are opening their offices in India and most of them are located in Bangalore and Hyderabad. So there is good future in this field in India also.

Company-Websites:

AMD www.amd.com

Analog Devices Inc. www.analog.com

ARM Inc. www.arm.com

Altera www.altera.com

Bharat Electronics www.bel-india.com

Cadence www.cadence.com

CDAC www.cdac.com

Chipset www.chipset.com

GE www.ge.com

IBM www.ibm.com

Intel www.intel.com

Synopsys www.synopsys.com

SANYO www.sanyo.com

KPIT Cummins www.kpitcummins.com

Texas Instruments www.ti.com

Motorola www.motorola.com



@Keep Smile @ALL IZZ WELL

Thank you 4r cn Blogspot!
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