Roadmap To Becoming A VLSI Engineer Or Chips Design Engineer

Hello guys, welcome back to my blog. In this article, I will discuss the roadmap to becoming a VLSI engineer, how to become a chip design engineer, skills required to become a VLSI engineer, salary, eligibility, job profiles in VLSI company, companies that are hiring for VLSI engineers, etc.

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Roadmap To Becoming A VLSI Engineer

The main motivation to become a VLSI engineer is the digital world that consists of many electronic devices and chips. In each and every electronics device integrated circuits are used such as amplifiers, basic gates, memories, microcontrollers, microprocessors, etc so the demand for VLSI engineer is increasing day by day. In earlier days, there was no digital data and devices but now the world is full of data and information stored in servers (means memories). The scope for VLSI engineers will increase more.

Topics that I will cover in this roadmap to becoming a VLSI engineer

Desirable skills
Branches
Work for engineers based on branch
About VLSI
About Analog, Digital & Mixed-signal design
How to start a career in VLSI
How to develop skill sets
Various job profiles in VLSI
Salary for VLSI engineers
Companies that are hiring for VLSI engineers

01. Desirable skills

One must have desirable skills to work in VLSI industry. The skills are:

a. Problem-solving ability: Suppose while doing any design if you face errors then you should have problem-solving ability to fix that error.

b. Think out of the box: The main aim while designing the layout is to reduce area, so you need to think out of the box that how I can reduce the area in layout design.

c. Learning attitude: This will help you to quickly learn new things related to your field like when adopting new technology you should able to learn quickly.

d. Work together: While working you should be friendly with your colleagues. And you should also have good listening skills.

02. Branches

The VLSI sector is a highly technical field that is totally based on electronics and electrical engineering. The companies will hires engineers from EE and EC branches. The EE (Electrical & Electronics) and EC (Electronics & Communication) engineering students deal with electronics and their background is strong in electronics, so the companies hire engineers from these two branches. If you are from another branch then it is very difficult for you to take a job in VLSI.

03. Work for engineers based on branch

There are many job profiles in VLSI. The work for engineers will be to design layout, design sematic, verifications, sale & marketing, etc. Later I will discuss in detail all job profiles. The design and verifications are done by using EDA tools like Cadence.

04. About VLSI

VLSI stands for very large-scale integrated circuits that consist of millions of transistors it contains 30000 – 1000000 transistors. The VLSI came into the year 1980. The main purpose of VLSI to reduce the area, improve the speed of the chip, and reduce power losses.

05. Analog, Digital & Mixed-signal design

The work of analog design engineers is to make analog integrated circuits that work on continuous varying (with respect to time) signals. For analog integrated circuits, external components are required. They are used to construct electronic circuits such as amplifiers, voltage comparators, etc.

The work of digital design engineers is to make digital integrated circuits. Digital circuits are nonlinear because they work on binary or discontinuous signals. The input and output voltages of digital circuits have two possible values (binary high or low) there are no intermediate levels. Digital integrated circuits are complete functioning blocks as no additional external components are required for their operation. The output can be obtained by applying input and is logic 0 or 1.

The mixed signal design engineers work on both analog and digital design.

06. How to start a career in VLSI

a. If you really want to join the VLSI industry then choose EE or EC branch in engineering because these branch students are eligible for VLSI companies.

b. Be strong in your engineering subjects like circuit analysis, analog electronics, digital electronics, VLSI CMOS, Verilog, etc because in interview questions will appear from these subjects.

c. Do projects during engineering related to VLSI or electronics which will help you during placement time. Later I will share 10 projects related to VLSI.

d. Be familiar with EDA tools that are used in chip design. Here is the article of Top 9 Tools Used In Chip Design.

07. How to develop skill sets

Once you choose the right path to become a VLSI engineer, then one question raises that how to develop a skill set related to VLSI because there will be many people in the same branch but to get a job you should have an excellent skill set. Now, I will discuss how to develop skill sets.

a. Online courses – You can do online courses on VLSI chip design from websites like Udemy, Coursera, NPTEL, etc. By doing an online course you can improve your skills.

b. Do an internship on chip design during summer. After the internship, you will become familiar with EDA tools like Cadence if they are using, and you will be able to design layout and schematic.

c. Webinars – Attend free webinars that are conducted by the expert or professors. You will learn a lot from the webinar because they will share their experience.

08. Various job profiles in VLSI

01. Application VLSI Engineers – This job is for those who are great at socializing with customers and those who want to work in R and D. In this job, engineers must travel a lot and should understand the requirements of customers based on application. If you are great at communication skills, interacting with people, and knowing customer need then this field is good for you.

The field also consists of subdomains such as application engineer for field and application engineer for corporate.

02. VLSI Chip Design Engineers – This field is for those who don’t like socializing and traveling. In this field, the engineer will design chips by utilizing tools. But you should be great at communication because to share ideas with your partners. The field consists of different subdomains such as FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays), ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit Design), AMS (Analog Mixed Signal Design), DFT (Design For Test), PCB ( Board Design).

03. VLSI Engineers For Verification – The work of the verification engineer is to verify the chips once the design is completed. The verification engineers must check whether the chip is working correctly or not. You must also know coding skills such as Verilog or VHDL. If you like coding then this field is suitable for you. The subdomains of verification engineers are product validation, hardware-software co-verification, front end verification, etc. The verification process is different for analog and digital design engineers.

04. Engineers For CAD – This job is fit for those who like to manage tools. The job of engineers is to manage EDA tools. You must also know the latest update in software. Engineers should also know which tool is utilized for each process. Each and everything you should know about EDA tools.

05. VLSI Engineers For Sales – At the end of the process, the final product is ready, then the engineers for sales and marketing are responsible to sell the chips at the market. If you are good at interacting with people, communication skills, sales and marketing then this job is suitable for you.

These are the 5 fields where VLSI engineers have opportunity to work.

09. Salary for VLSI engineers

The average salary of VLSI engineers in India is 5.5 lakhs per year and in the US it is 81 thousand dollars per year. If you like to do it in India you can do or else if you want to earn more than try for the US. In India, almost every jobs are on verification and design.

10. Companies that are hiring for VLSI engineers

The top 10 companies in VLSI industry are:

Samsung
Intel
SK Hynix
TSMC
Micron
Broadcom
Qualcomm
Toshiba
Texas Instruments
Nvidia

These are the roadmap to becoming a VLSI engineer. I hope this article may help you all a lot. Thank you for reading. If you have any doubts related to this article “Roadmap To Becoming A VLSI Engineer”, then comment below.

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Chetan Shidling

Automotive | Technical Blogger | Engineer | Content Creator

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