Constant development of tools often breaks something internally which can lead to other issues. Hence there is a need to test the tool for its previous supporting features. But the tool needs an environment to get launched and good test cases to test the features. This is called as “Continuous Integration (CI)”. I
From nothing to Tapeout Ready basic designs – These 7 students have seen it all. Congratulations to all of them. Great start to their semiconductor career.
Here’s the link with their design details-
VSD promises to deliver similar IP design workshops in upcoming days, followed by the next big leap – SoC design workshop with VSD SoC generator using all VSD IPs developed by VSD community using Skywater 130 nm technology node.
Power analysis has materialized as a principal theme in today’s world in semiconductor industries. As very large scale integrated circuit (VLSI) are far beyond from human ability because of complexity in nature. So to analyse power in these circuits we use open source computer aided tools, plenty of tools are available but most of them are costly. I designed an open source power analysis tool for the academic use. This tool gives out values of average and leakage power of any circuit by just giving the netlist of circuit file along with name of supply voltage as input. This tool is designed in python language.
The task given to me was “Design of Open-source Power analysis tool – calculate average switching power and leakage power – Using TCL/Perl/Python – any language”. The entire program is divided into 4 phases.
Above article does talk about chip shortage, which is due to increased demand of consumer electronics like laptops, tablets, mobiles, which was never the case […]
It was also a real testament to Nicholas’s thirst for knowledge and the outside-the-box thinking of his home-schooling parents, Rasa and Mike. Having a 13-year-old of my own, I was particularly impressed by Nicholas’s willingness to put himself out there, asking questions and joining Zoom calls (not to mention his familiarity with Linux). I’ve since learned that Nicholas has been awarded in spelling bees and math competitions and is an expert at solving the Rubik’s Cube. Somehow, I’m not surprised.
Know what Pentagon is? It is a plane figure which has 5-straight sides and 5-angles. For a perfect pentagon, it needs all its sides and angles to be the same, till the last decimal. Do you know what is the similarity between pentagon and our upcoming workshop “Advanced Physical Design workshop using OpenLANE/SKY130”? Look above image and you would guess it right. It is a perfect blend of topics where even a fresher can jump-start his/her career in chip design in just 5-days
A great one – not only for VSD, but also for entire VSD community. The journey has just begun, in nutshell, below image shows a well-designed VLSI Skilling model (VSD Workshops + VSD-IP design Internship + Tapeout[working on it]), which is not just participants driven but also silicon proven. To summarize, given a problem statement, VSD Interns and participants, who have gone through this rigorous training and designing model will have much better ways to figure out solutions by themselves.
And that’s where VSD must play an especially important role to bring in latest and greatest VLSI skills to you, atleast in the field of open-source hardware. VSD owes a lot to VLSI community and hence has planned 3 exclusive cloud lab-based VLSI workshops on 3 important topics, with top 3 expert instructors from around globe, having more than 2 decades of experience – Tim Edwards, Steve Hoover, and Prof. Mohamed Shalan
Open-source EDA tool development with lab exercises using Sky130 pdk’s by Google/Skywater
RISC-V micro-architecture using transaction level – Verilog with lab exercises on Makerchip Platform
SoC and Physical Design using Automated RTL2GDS OpenLANE tool with lab exercises using demo design and Sky130 pdk’s.
