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On June 27, 2005, the Indian Semiconductor Association (ISA), the Visvesvaraya Technical University (VTU), and the VLSI Society of India (VSI) jointly entered a Memorandum of Agreement (MoU) starting June 2005 with the goal of strengthening the industry-academia interaction.
The intention of the MoU is to strengthen the bonds between VTU and the semiconductor industries in India. VTU represents a conglomeration of over 250 engineering colleges and gives the semiconductor industry a great opportunity to get involved with the academia, provide inputs in improving the curriculum, delivering seminars, teaching courses, and so on.
The third VTU-VSI-ISA Confluence meeting was held at Hubli on October 13, 2006.
The fourth VTU-VSI-ISA Confluence meeting is scheduled at RVCE, Bangalore on February 28, 2007.
The proceedings of all the Confluence meetings are available as softcopy. Write to vsisecy@vlsi-india.org for details
Fourth VTU-VSI-ISA Confluence meeting
28th February 2007:
Organized by: VLSI Society of India
Supported by R.V.
College of Engineering, Bangalore, and India Semiconductor Association
Venue: Main Auditorium, RV College Campus, Mysore Road, Bangalore
Details
Speakers: Anuradha Srinivasan, Intel India; Dr. C.P. Ravikumar, Texas Instruments India; Madhav Chikodikar, Synplicity; Nisha P.K., Texas Instruments India; Arun Pradeep, NXP Semiconductors India, and Razak Mohammed Ali, Alterra Semiconductor India
Panel Discussion: A Profession in Semiconductor Industry – What “IT” is and what “IT” is not.
Moderator: C.P. Ravikumar, Texas Instruments India
Panelists: N.S. Murty, NXP Semiconductors India; A. Vasudevan, Wipro Technologies; Ram Jonnavithula, Texas Instruments India; V. Veerappan, Tessolve India
Photographs
Third VTU-VSI-ISA Confluence meeting
13th October 2006:
Organized by B.V.Bhoomaraddi College of Engineering and Technology (BVBCET), Hubli
C-lite Seminar hall, BVB Cmpus, Hubli-580 031
Report by Anil Nandi, BVBCET, Hubli
Photographs
The third VTU-VSI-ISA confluence meeting was held on October 13, 2006 at BVB College of Engineering and Technology, Hubli. This is an event in the series of such programs being held under the aegis of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Visweswaraya Technical University (VTU), India Semiconductor Association (ISA) and VLSI Society of India (VSI). The intention of such meetings is to promote the subject of VLSI and semiconductors among the academic community of the VTU and help the students and faculty of the M.Tech - VLSI and Embedded Systems
stream to gain knowledge of industrial practices.
The event was attended by 200 participants including faculty and students from various colleges in the state, including
RVCE Bangalore, SJCE Mysore, BEC Bagalkot, VTU Belgaum, BIET Davanagere, GIT Balgaum, BVBCET Hubli and many Engineering Colleges in the vicinity of Hubli. Seven speakers from the VLSI industry made tutorial presentations
at the meeting.
The Principal of BVBCET, Hubli, Dr. Ashok Shettar, welcomed the gathering. Dr.S.Mahant-Shetti, CEO, KarMic, Manipal, inaugurated the confluence. He spoke about the need for quality education. He emphasized that modern education needs planning, execution and measurement. He highlighted the method of training provided at KarMic, Manipal.
We thank the efforts of Prof. B.V. Desai of BVB College of Engineering, Hubli in organizing the event. We also thank Poornima Shenoy of ISA for her help.
Mr. Arun Pradeep, NXP Semiconductors, Bangalore, spoke on the topic of Advent of new technologies in mobile
multimedia and communications. He introduced some new trends such as “Push to talk” on Cellular phones, TV on Mobile, Mobile with Near Field Communications, Mobile for people hard of hearing, Location based Services and Mobile Content management.
Mr. Gururaj Badiger, NXP Semiconductors, Bangalore, spoke on the topic of Embedded systems- A case study on Digital TV. He provided an introduction to Analog TV and Transmission Standards, Digital Transmission and Reception, System Architecture, Software Architecture, Debugging.
Mr. P.Radhakrishnan, Open-Silicon, Bangalore, spoke on the topic of SOC/ASIC design flow. His tutorial covered the concepts of ASICs, ASIC Design Flow, Front end, Backend, Synthesis, Floor plan, Clock Tree, Routing, Static Timing Analysis, and Packaging.
Mr. Razzak Mohd. Ali, Manager, Altera systems, Bangalore, spoke on DSP System Design Using FPGAs. The talk covered the role of FPGAs in DSP applications, DSP Features in FPGAs, FPGA Tools for DSP Design, DSP Design Flow, and Case Studies.
Mr. Girish Baliga, Application Manager, CG-Corel Bangalore, spoke on the topic of Fast & Flexible Embedded Processing using Xilinx FPGAs.
Mr. Prabhat Agarwal, Manager, Sankalp semiconductor, Hubli spoke on the topic of High speed chip interface. He highlighted on the necessity of high speed chip interface/IO, IO Functions, Commonly known Interface Standards, IO Design Challenges, Latest Trends in High Speed, LVDS – Specification/ Architecture and its future.
Mr. Kamal Aggarwal, Intel Technology India Pvt. Ltd spoke on the topic The Current Buzzword in Semiconductor
Industry Optimization and Efficiency. He highlighted on Custom Design Flow, Challenges faced by the Industry, and how automation can be a Savior and Challenger.
VTU meets with ISA, VSI
April 28, 2006:
The Visvesvaraya Technological University-Belgaum recently met with the VLSI Society of India (VSI) and the India Semiconductor Association (ISA), providing a means for faculty members, students and the semiconductor industry to come together.
VTU had earlier entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with VSI and ISA to strengthen its link with India's semiconductor industry.
At the meeting VTU Vice-Chancellor Dr. K Balaveera Reddy shared that the university is made up of 121 engineering colleges. This gives the semiconductor industry a great opportunity to get involved with academia, providing inputs in improving the curriculum, delivering seminars, and teaching courses.
The meeting is the second activity in the events lined-up in the MoU. According to the organizers, the meeting was arranged to provide updates in the semiconductor industry to M.Tech students. Around 75 M.Tech VLSI students from selected institutions participated in the meeting and presented papers on various topics.
Several industry experts also presented technical papers. Dharmaraya M Nedalgi of Philips Semiconductor presented a paper on "Issues in IO Cell Design" that discussed the challenges in designing an IO cell, and covered areas such as noise margin, multiple supply domains, load, different signalling, supply bounce, hot-plug design, high voltage signalling, process technology, latch-up, electro migration, ESD and other related issues.
Razak Mohmmad Ali from Altera Semiconductor India presented a paper on how to use FPGA devices to build embedded systems and embedded system designs.
Gap between students' capabilities and industry requirements
Speaking to EE Times India after the event, Dr. M.S. Shivakumar, VTU's Registrar, said that the expected outcome of inviting industry inputs to the curriculum was to upgrade the university's syllabus for VLSI and embedded systems design, and reduce the gap between students' capabilities and the requirements of India's semiconductor industry.
"Industry has emphasised the importance of exposing students to recent tools for VLSI design that are used in industry," said Shivakumar. "Traditionally, universities have been resorting to preliminary freeware tools that provide a very basic exposure to students, due to the expenses involved in acquiring the complete tool sets. We are now making the transition to using actual tool sets that VLSI design engineers use in industry.
" One of the key issues involved in equipping the university with the latest tool sets is their cost. "We have requested the industry to make tools more affordable for us. EDA tool companies like Cadence, Synopsis, and Mentor have all made their tools available to us at a very nominal cost. So have Intel and Sun Microsystems with regard to the hardware for the laboratory, and Microsoft for the systems software environment," said Shivakumar.
The definition of projects too has undergone a change to relate it more closely to what students may encounter in actual work in industry. "A list of projects for VLSI and embedded systems design has been defined by the industry members of the ISA. Their expectation is to have an actual product developed as an outcome of the project effort," Shivakumar explained.
"The projects will put students through the entire design and development life cycle, spanning design, synthesis and testing. Students will carry out project work under supervision by a faculty member from the college who will closely monitor the quality of project work."
According to Shivakumar, VTU interacts with industry on critical aspects such as syllabus design, industry guidance for establishing fully equipped laboratories at the university, and placement of students in industry.
Krishnan Sivaramakrishnan, EE Times India
Presentations at the 2nd Confluence meeting
Challenges in Analog Design - Kaushal Jha, Analog Devices, India
Biasing technique, stability analysis, noise analysis, mismatch analysis, substrate noise in mixed signal design
Challenges in IO Design - Dharmaray M. Nedalgi, Philips Semiconductors
Issues in IO Cell Design
Embedded System Design using FPGA - Razak Mohmmad Ali, Altera Semiconductors India
How to use FPGA devices to build embedded systems - includes demo
Challenges in Low Power Design - Lakshminarayanan Venkatachalam and Umapathy Jayaraman, Intel India
Student Paper Presentations
Wakeup Fresh Alarm
K. Subashith, Santosh Gokak, Apurva Shukla, Colin Rebello, Shweta Shanbhag, Shreyaswini K. and Vijaykumar Thombare
Smart Seeder
Sumit J Bhat, Vijaykumar PJ, Nusaiba CA, Vijayanand MJ, Sainath D Patil, Shashikala SG and Mahantesh KT
Fun with Faces
Kiriti Kakkar, Lingraj Aras, Manoj Kumar, Rayagond Kaakatunar, Sankar Ghosh, Shashishekhar Patil and Shridhar Moorkhandi
Blind, but not Color Blind
Archana Shetty, Madhuri Chowdhary, Malesh S Mugalakhod, Mallikarjun A Biradar, Poornima M Kadakol, Prashant Wilson Crasta P, Rauf S, Shwetha Shetty and Sravani Das B
Sudoku - Numbers that outnumber You!
Amruta G Pawar, Sandeep Nayak, Anoosha Shetty, Seema Hegde, Narayan S Mahipati, Shashikala V Pawar, Prashant Kulkarni, Shubhalakshmi M and Ravi S Siddanath
Industry-Academic Confluence Meeting at Bangalore
Announcement
A brief report
Feb 24, 2006,
Bangalore:
The VLSI Society
of India signed an MoU with the Visvesvaraya Technological
University (headquartered at Belgaum, Karnataka) and the India
Semiconductor Association in August 2005 in order to spread and
improve the quality of VLSI Education. Under the aegis of this MoU,
colleges that offer M.Tech programs in VLSI Design and Embedded
Systems have been identified as centers where champions from the
industry will work in close cooperation with faculty champions to
improve the quality of M.Tech programs.
The complete
list of the colleges includes:
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Gnanasangama Campus, VTU, Belgaum
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BMS
College, Bangalore
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UTL
Extension Centre, Bangalore
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BVB
Engineering College, Hubli
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PDA
College of Engineering, Gulbarga
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KLECT,
Belgaum
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SJCE,
Mysore
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RV
College of Engineering, Bangalore
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Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering
Industries that
have come forward to interact with these colleges include Altera,
Intel, Texas Instruments, ST Microelectronics, AMD, and many
others. A confluence meeting, which brought together all the
M.Tech students, the faculty, and the industry champions, was
held at BMS College, Bangalore, on February 24, 2006. The
conference was inaugurated by Prof. Balaveera Reddy, Vice
Chancellor of VTU, who emphasized the importance of the MoU and
the confluence meeting. He felt that the MoU between VTU, VSI,
and ISA is very special because it involves a large number of
industries and has the potential to provide the much-needed
academia-industry interaction. He called upon ISA and VSI to
contemplate an M.Tech program in VLSI Design that can be offered
jointly by the three bodies. Poornima Shenoy, the President of
ISA, explained the background of the MoU and the activities that
can be planned under its umbrella. She felt that in addition to
curriculum improvement in technical subjects, there is a need to
emphasize on soft skills which are necessary for a professional
to succeed in the area of semiconductors. Dr C.P. Ravikumar,
secretary of VSI, felt that this meeting can set into motion a
series of events that the colleges can organize over the year to
keep their M.Tech programs vibrant. He announced the next event
at Gnanasagama Campus, Belgaum, on April 28. He announced an
essay writing competition WHY I Chose To Become A VLSI
Professional sponsored by the VLSI Society of India
for the M.Tech students of VTU specializing in VLSI/Embedded
Systems. The details of the
essay competition have been
announced on the VSI website. Prof. K. Jayaraman and Prof. V.
Sreedhar of VTU thanked everyone who have helped in organizing
the meeting.
The purpose of
the meeting was to provide exposure of the VLSI industry in
India to the M.Tech students. A number of presentations were
made by several industries towards this goal. A brochure
containing salient details of many local industries was released
during the conference. Dr S.S. Mahant-Shetty of Karmic, Manipal,
spoke about the topic of student projects in the area of
VLSI/Microelectronics. He explained the two theories, “Theory Y”
and “Theory X” first popularized by Maslow McGregor. The Theory
Y postulates that The
expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural
as play or rest. The second theory postulates that “The average human being has an inherent dislike
of work and will avoid it if he can. Because of their dislike
for work, most people must be controlled and threatened before
they will work hard enough.” Which one of these must
be applied to student projects in microelectronics? Dr
Mahant-Shetti gave examples of how the use of “Theory Y” has led
to successes in student workshops held at Manipal. For example,
the CLDW 2005 held under the aegis of VLSI Society of India
during the summer of 2005 saw the participation of about 40
students and faculty. One of the projects completed during this
workshop has since been presented at
VDAT 2005 and published as
a regular paper in VSI VISION (December 2005). He gave tips on
making projects successful through the deployment of “Theory Y.”
As part of the
“industry exposure” campaign, Dr C. P. Ravikumar spoke about the
ongoing work at Texas Instruments India and described the
various products and market segments where Texas Instruments
operates. He spoke about the DSP related products, wireless
chipsets, ASICs, and high performance Analog products being
designed at TI India. Dr H.V. Ananda of Synplicity spoke about
the EDA industry in general and the kind of skill sets required
to work in the EDA industry. He emphasized that when one works
in the EDA industry, an engineer will most certainly use 100% of
all the knowledge gathered during the four years of the
engineering curriculum. He also explained the ongoing product
development work at Synplicity Bangalore. Sanjay Bansal spoke
about the work on embedded systems at Philips Semiconductors,
India. He explained how embedded systems touch every aspect of
human life today, from the morning wakeup call and throughout
the day. Biswadeep
Chatterjee of Intel spoke about the implementation challenges
offered by sub-100 nanometer design technology. He opened up
several avenues where student projects are possible, such as a
power routing algorithm for system-on-chip designs, handling of
signal integrity problems such as crosstalk and IR drop. Saj
Kapoor of Analog Devices exposed the students to the challenges
faced in designing DSP chips. He explained how full custom
design may be necessary when high performance and low power are
necessary, and how cell-based design is necessary when
time-to-market is critical. Mukund Srinivasan of Wipro spoke
about the design services offered by Wipro in the areas of VLSII
and Embedded system design. With the acquiring of New Logic by
Wipro, the latter has become a major IP provider in IEEE 1394.
He explained how the design services offered by Wipro have
steadily moved up the value chain.
The day ended
with discussions among the industrial participants, students,
and faculty. The next confluence meeting will be held at
Gnanasangama Campus, Belgaum, on April 21, 2006.
Foils of the "Industry Exposure" campaign presentations are
available here:
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