37 chips in a semester and 25 chips this quarter - These are some amazing numbers achieved through VSD - IIIT Bangalore Industry-Academia
collaboration and very soon IIIT Bangalore will be called the Chip Tapeout Machine of Bangalore, India
Hi
These are some mind-boggling numbers achieved through
just a 6-month Industry-Academia collaboration between VSD and IIIT Bangalore.
Frankly, to attain these numbers (which is a similar exercise followed by a fabless industry) was possible with a collaborative solution developed by Google, OpenROAD, Efabless and Skywater Technologies and
was executed on large scale by the VSD team.
This was all possible due to bold steps taken by IIIT Bangalore faculties, Prof. Madhav and Prof. Nanditha, to bring in VSD as adjunct faculty and provide the liberty to include a VSD 5-stage design process which overall led to such amazing results.
A very senior professor from a reputed university had told me once - "The ultimate certificate in VLSI and Semiconductors course is a chip tapeout experience". That line has become a vision statement in VSD culture and all our educational activities have been around how to simplify chip design and manufacturing processes.
Thanks to Google, OpenROAD, efabless and Skywater Technologies for helping with technologic which were seamlessly plugged into the VSD Ed-tech process leading to massive chip design and tapeout numbers per quarter.
Though the designs chosen for tapeout were quite simple considering all students were very new to the VLSI domain, just like freshers, the process helped to
seed the right attitude into these young minds and we just wish they would take this ahead in their careers
So are we done here?
Not yet, Mixed-signal designs, chip tape-in, chip testing, product design and many more,
coming soon. Stay tuned !!
