For students pursuing degree in Electrical/Electronics, one of their core industries is Semiconductor industry. Companies in Semiconductor industry contribute to making of hardware chips which are used in computers, smart phones, cars, and various electronic devices.

Semiconductor industry has grown well in the last fifty years. Around early 1990s computers started finding use in house-holds, followed by smart phones and in the last five years there has been an explosion of devices coming into households which use hardware chips. The car is getting more and more computerized. With emergence of AI and ML, demand for chips are rising and there is a good healthy growth in the industry.

One of the metrics to know about the state of the semiconductor industry is the SOX index which comprises of the top semiconductor stocks. The index has been performing well the last couple of years. This coupled with the ever increasing automation driven demand for electronic devices, projects growth in the coming years for the industry and it makes absolute sense for Electrical/Electronic students to stay the course and stay in their core.

Chip making process involves design, verification, place & route, scan insertion, manufacture, and validation. The top skills that are in demand in the industry are

1. Design Verification (DV)
2. Physical Design (PD)
3. Design for Test (DFT)
4. Validation.
5. RTL Design
6. Integration engineer.

If we take Design Verification for instance, it involves reading the specification of the design, arriving at the features that are in the design and plan and verify all the features before the chip is sent for manufacturing. DV work would involve writing code in System Verilog language. The code models the real world for the design/chip and makes sure the chip design works as expected. It involves lots of programming.

Similarly, for each skill that the industry needs, students can aim to get to know about what it means and what it involves and figure out if it is a natural fit for them. While they are pursuing their degree, if the students go through this process, it will aid them in getting a head-start into their career.

At Edveon, we have a cloud-based learning platform EdvLearn through which students can develop skills used prevalently in Semiconductor industry. Check us out at VLSI Design and Verification Training.