The Power of an Intense VLSI Program by SFAL/VSD

Today, as technology races towards ever-smaller geometries and more complex chips, the need for professionals who are not just well-versed in theory but also skilled in practical, hands-on experience has never been more critical. An intense VLSI program that mirrors industry practices is the beacon that guides aspiring engineers across this bridge.

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150+ students have decided to upskill in VLSI

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.

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The horrible std cell ever designed by me….

Power rail discontinuity – We would like to have continuous power rail.N- and P-diffusion discontinuity – We would like to have continuous diffusion. For my Physical design friends, remember, we add “FILLER” cells at the end of routing, and you always wondered why we are doing so.Small substrate contacts – Except for inverter, all substrate contacts are single width, which will create high resistance path for current, thus increasing “Clk-to-Q” delay.Hanging metal1 – If you see for the NAND gate outputs, there is lot of hanging metal1.

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Chennai, we are coming to you for next RISC-V workshop…

So glad and happy to let you know that we will be presenting in RISC-V workshop at IIT Madras, India, on July 19, 2018 at 2pm (organized by RISC-V foundation), and topic is something which we have mastered in last 7 years – its about a survey of E31 RISC-V core floorplan and its impact on power, performance and area.

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Use this tool for PNR – Its FREE

If you learn this tool and use it to build your own applications, you might end up presenting a paper in our online conference happening soon called “VSDOpen” – The first ever online conference on opensource EDA.

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From VLSI to System Design (SoC) – The choice of SPI

SPI model is a master/slave model. There’s some SPI master which determines who gets to transmit and who gets to receive. The output from SPI master is called MOSI (Master Out Slave In). If you have 2 slaves, slave 1 and slave 2, as shown below, MOSI goes to all the slaves .Then you have another line MISO (Master In Slave Out). All the wires are connected, as shown in below image. Then you have a master only function called SCLK, which goes to all the slaves. Now also, there must be a slave select (SS) for S1 and a slave select for S2.

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