SKILLS REQUIRED BY VLSI ENGINEER


 If we talk about VLSI skill set required to become a good VLSI engineer then there are some mandatory as well as add on set of skills.


Mandatory Skills:

  • One should have good knowledge of digital electronics , mostly focus should be on combinational circuits & Sequential Circuits, Logic gates and basics of Finite State machine.
  • Comlplete knowlege of ASIC flow and related topics .
  • Should be expert in Verilog/VHDL coding , one of them will be suffcient.
  • Basic understanding of the Timing Analysis(STA) and all its related concepts will require.
  • C programming and hands on experience of at leastone scripting language that are TCL and Perl. 
  • Coding of SystemVerilog(Only for Asic Verification) and knowledge on verification Environment using Methods like OVM/UVM.
  • Should know protocols like Advanced Peripheral Bus (APB), Inter-Integrated Circuit.



Additional Skills:-

  • Understanding of  Assertions and Functional Coverage as well as Code Coverage.
  • Basic understanding on Design For Testification.
  • For FPGA profiles knowledge on FPGA architecture and its related flow will be useful.

After knowing the skills , next step is how to learn them:

  • For digital circuits standard books like John F. Wakerly  or Morris Mano and master all the concepts.For more knowledge refer NPTEL lectures .
  • To learn Verilog/VHDL the book of Samir Palnitkar/J.Bhaskar good .
  • Practice writing small codes which will help to devolope more understanding
  • Sunburst Design papers are good to refer on Verilog & SystemVerilog for more in-depth understanding.
  • And most important Practice more and more problems and ask as many question as you can.



AUTHOR : ADARSH DALAVI

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