VLSI Design Flow

Chip design process goes through various transformations and get you the final product. One needs to understand all the steps of the VLSI design flow when he begins his career in any semiconductor industry.

Product Specification
This is a detailed document that defines the product functionality and features. It’s a golden reference to the complete design team. Let us say you are designing mobile chip. The spec of this chip has the details like, tele conference, email support, audio and video, built-in camera, games, etc.

FRONT-END DESIGN

RTL
Design team drafts one more document called design specification before capturing the Register Transfer Level logics in HDLs. This design specification has all the details that are needed for the hardware design, such as design architecture, RTL block diagram, clock frequency, waveforms, clock domain details, port details, design partition details etc.

One can't easily become RTL designer just by learning HDLs. You need to learn RTL coding style from the experienced designers.

Verification
Verification team drafts an another document called verification plan. This verification plan have all the details needed for the verification, such as TB architecture, coverage models, list of key features to be verified etc. In this verification process, RTL functionality is simulated and verified whether it behaves as per the product specification.

Most of the ASIC re-spins are due to the functional bugs. Verification process is not yet completely automated and its more time consuming than the design implementation process. 70% of the design cycle time is consumed by the verification.

Refer my blog Verification Sigin-off at
http://vlsi-verification.blogspot.com/2008/12/verification-sign-off.html

Synthesis
The verified RTL is synthesized into Gate Level Netlist. This process is completely automated with the help of EDA tools. But still one needs to be good at HDL based design implementation to understand the reports generated by the Synthesizer and explain to the design team about the synthesis related issues.

BACK-END DESIGN

Place and Route

The netlist is basically a list of primitives. All the primitives are placed and connected to form the chip layout. The P&R process is also completely automated. But still one needs to understand the tool very well and try different routing algorithms to implement the design effectively on to the chip.

CHIP IMPLEMENTATION

FPGA
The P&R process produces a binary file as output. This binary data will be used to configure the FPGA. The configured FPGA implements the design functionality.

ASIC
Finally the routed netlist that is called as GDS-II will be sent to the foundry that manufactures the chip as per the technology requirement

Challenge the Economic Recession

Everybody is scared of this economic recession. Industries are not doing well in this downturn. Most of the industries stopped recruiting even experienced engineers. Newspaper stories of Layoffs and Pink Slips threaten us further.

How are you going to face this industry downturn?

I am sure you will try sincerely to get into industry. You will keep on applying to the companies. But in this situation industries might hesitate to consider fresher. If this continues for some time, you would get frustrated and lose your confidence. You may even start thinking of changing your career too. I am not trying to threaten you by exaggerating the current situation. It's natural and the market condition always goes through peaks and slowdowns in a cyclic fashion. So you can't do anything just by worrying about the economic recession. You should plan very carefully how to face it.

Do you want to be idle till this situation becomes normal?

Time is GOLD. I suggest you to utilize this time very usefully. Do some specialized trainings and increase your skill sets. But you need to choose the training institution very carefully. Find out, whether they are really capable of guiding you to do the industry standard projects on your own. The projects that you do will increase the value of your resume. This way you can make yourself ready and face the interviews when the industries start recruiting.

Be positive. Challenge this economic down turn and show to this world who you are... All the best!

You can reach me directly at guru.vlsitech@gmail.com for any help or information that you may require regarding VLSI career,VLSI training institutions etc ..

What is SystemVerilog?

Let us first understand what is Systemverilog [SV]. SV is not something like a brand new hardware verification language. It's built on top of Verilog HDL. All the Verilog language constructs seamlessly work with SV and vice-versa. In common man terms, one can say SystemVerilog is the latest version of Verilog HDL.


Why we need this language?
Basically HDLs are meant for RTL description of the design and they are not good for verification. Some engineers wrongly assume that Verilog is good for verification and VHDL is good for RTL. Actually both HDLs lack many constructs that you need for complex chip level verification.


Usually verification engineers use Hardware Verification Languages [HVLs] like e, Vera to implement the testbenches. RTL designers use HDLs , Verilog or VHDL for the design implementation and SVA/PSL for the assertions. So one needs to learn multiple languages to manage the complete front-end design process.

SystemVerilog is the language that supports everything you need for RTL implementation and verification as well. Being an SV expert, one can easily become front-end designer/verification engineer.

You can directly reach me at guru.vlsitech@gmail.com to know more about SystemVerilog ... VLSI training institutions etc .

Why you need to learn SystemVerilog?

In VLSI industries, everybody talks about SystemVerilog [SV]. We also find lot of job opportunities for the verification engineers who have working knowledge in SV. Students also look out for the VLSI design courses that focus more on verification and SV. They also strongly believe that SV knowledge is highly needed to get into industries.

Why so much noise about SystemVerilog? What is happening in the verification world?

I still remember, few years back everybody was talking about the hardware verification language 'e' and Specman. Industries used to search for the strings "e" and "Specman" in the resume. Cadence also acquired Versity to increase their market share in the verification. But now the VLSI industries are moving towards SV and migrating their legacy testbenches from the proprietary HVLs and HDLs to SV.

This change in the verification community clearly indicates that you always need to update yourself on the latest technology to maintain your market value, whether you are a student or an experienced verification engineer.

Are you getting enough interview calls?

You registered in most of the prominent job portals and floated your resume. You are sincerely tracking all the news paper advertisements and applying for at least 5-10 jobs every day. But not getting any interview calls. This clearly indicates something wrong with your resume. You should know how to build your resume.

Let us first understand why most of the fresher are not getting interview calls.

Average Academic Record
You may not be able to attract the selectors just by showing your average marks. You may have good record on extracurricular activities and sports but that might help only during the final HR interview. You have to do something extra to make your resume more valuable.

Lack of information about industries
You have excellent academic record, but still not getting interview calls. You really need to understand how to project your knowledge in the technology that has huge demand and attract the interviewers.

Economic Recession
Industries stopped recruiting even experienced engineers. They do lay-offs too. In tough situations, you really need to spend your time usefully to build your skill sets.

I can list out many reasons why you are not getting interview calls. But if you understand some of the basic things that I outlined here have serious impact on getting calls, you could rewrite your fate by making your resume distinct.

You can't make your resume distinct and valuable just by adding more information and formatting it with colorful fonts and bullets. You have to build your resume. Do some home work. Find out what industries expect from fresher. Improve your knowledge and skills based on the job opportunities. Add the new skill sets in your resume.

I would like to provide some suggestions to make your resume valuable and distinct.

- Make your resume simple and well formatted. It should be 2-4 pages maximum.
If you are a fresher, maximum 2 pages enough.
- Summarize your knowledge and skills at the beginning of your resume.
- Find out which technology has so much demand and what industry people expect from you. Learn those things and add it in your resume.
- Do some specialized courses and increase the value of your resume by adding new projects and technology.
- Interact with experienced people and find out which technology has huge demand.
- Inform very clearly what you are currently doing.
- You can have different kinds of resume based on the industry type. This helps you to attract them by projecting the information that they are looking for. But only few variations are enough.
- Be honest. Make sure that your resume is 100% genuine.
- Take the help of HR consultants/Head hunters to format your resume.

Simple idea, Search for good resumes in Google. Why don't you follow the same template, if it impresses you at the first sight?