India's teaching community contemplates SoC design

The VLSI Society of India recently organized a two-day faculty development workshop on SoC design, — Train-the-Trainer program — on Oct. 30-31, 2010, at the Texas Instruments India office, in co-operation with PragaTI (TI India Technical University) and Visweswaraya Technological University (VTU).

Dr. C.P. Ravikumar, TI, addressing the teachers at the workshop on SoC design.

I am highly obliged and very grateful to the VLSI Society of India and Dr. C.P. Ravikumar, technical director, University Relations, Texas Instruments India, for extending an invitation. Here is a report on the workshop, which the VSI Secretariat and Dr. Ravikumar have been most kind to share.

System-on-chip (SoC) refers to the technological revolution, which allows semiconductor manufacturers to integrate electronic systems on the same chip. System-on-board, which has been the conventional implementation of electronic systems, uses semiconductor chips soldered onto printed circuit boards (PCBs) to realize system functionality.

Systems typically include sensors, analog frontend, digital processors, memories and peripherals. Thanks to the advances in VLSI technology, these sub-systems can be integrated on the same chip, reducing the footprint, cutting down the cost, improving the performance and power efficiency.

While the industry has adopted SoC design for many years, the academic community around the world (India not being an exception) has not caught up with the state-of-the-art. Electrical/electronics engineering departments continue to teach a course on VLSI design, where the level of design abstraction is device-level, transistor-level, or gate-level.

Register-transfer-level (RTL) design using hardware description languages is taught in some Masters’ programs, but colleges often do not have the lab infrastructure to carry out large design projects; very few Indian universities have tie-ups with foundry services to get samples. A semester is too short a time to complete a large project.

The complexity of modern-day design flow is not easy to impart in a single undergraduate course. Masters’ programs are particularly relevant in VLSI, but the M.Tech programs in the country languish due to several reasons.

Ground realities
“M.Tech programs do not attract top students who are highly motivated,” said a professor who attended the two-day faculty development program organized by VLSI Society of India. “Almost all undergraduate programs today have a course on VLSI technology and design. But since we get students from different backgrounds, they do not have the pre-requisites. So, a course on VLSI design at M.Tech level will have a significant overlap with an undergraduate course on VLSI design.”

“Faculty members need training,” said another teacher. “When a new course is introduced, significant time is needed for preparation.  Prescribed textbooks for a new course are often not available. Internet search for course materials often returns too much material and it is hard to decide what to use. Colleges that have autonomy can decide their own curriculum, but in a university setup, the faculty face a major challenge. We are evaluated on how well our students fare in the exams. Yet, our students have to face an exam made by a central committee.”

“Having a common exam poses many problems in setting up a relevant question paper. The format of the question paper is fixed. The students get a choice of answering five questions from a set of eight. Due to the common nature of the question paper, the questions tend to demand descriptive answers.”

Faculty development workshop on SoC design
About 30 faculty members interested in system-on-chip design took part in the faculty development workshop. The attendees came from about 25 different colleges from VTU, VIT University, and Anna University. The workshop was conducted in co-operation with the Viswesaraya Technological University (VTU) and sponsored by Texas Instruments, India.

The premise for the workshop was that a course on SoC design is required at the Masters’ level, since industrial practice has clearly moved in that direction. The RTL-to-layout flow, which continues to be relevant for IPs that constitute an SoC, aspects of SoC design, which relies on IP integration, are not covered in any course.

The workshop provided a forum for industry-academia interaction. Several professionals from the industry took part in the workshop and answered questions from the faculty members. 

Academia wins big at ISA-VSI Technovation Awards

The India Semiconductor Association (ISA), along with the VLSI Society of India (VSI), gave away the first ISA-VSI Technovation Awards before a gathering of the virtual who’s who of the Indian semicon industry in Bangalore.

This is probably the first time that the Indian academia has been honored in such a manner by an industry association. The occasion symbolized how closely the Indian academia was working with the Indian semiconductor industry.

The ISA-VSI TechnoVisionary, a Lifetime achievement award, was given to Prof. Krishna Saraswat from the Stanford University, USA for his outstanding contributions in the field of semiconductors.

The ISA-VSI TechnoMentor of the year award was given to Prof. Jagdish Kumar of IIT-Delhi, an academic professional working in India for mentoring and research. The professor thanked all of his students and well wishers, who contributed in one way or the other in his receiving the award.

The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and the Indian Institute of Technology, Karagpur were the joint recipients of the ISA-VSI TechnoShield Award. The two institutes have done commendable work in the field of microelectronics.

Rakesh Sharma from the National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra and Syam Sundar Reddy E, from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, received the ISA-VSI TechnoInventor Award for their outstanding post-graduate and doctoral research thesis.

Poornima Shenoy, president, ISA, summed it all aptly saying: “The semiconductor driven industry relies on university research to take it further. India should be an active participant in this process and industry appreciates and understands this fact.”