A VLSI circuit design course for practitioners and researchers

Abstract

Graduate students can usually be classified in two categories: research engineers and practicing engineers. The microelectronic systems education of these two groups of students have different objectives. This paper describes a one semester course developed to meet the objectives for both groups of students. The course lectures cover custom and semicustom CMOS VLSI circuit design, and the laboratory utilizes a mixture of public domain and commercial CAD tools.