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Let’s quickly go through the terminology here: ASIC and FPGA An ASIC is an "Application Specific IC", a chip specifically designed for a specific purpose. An FPGA is a "Field Programmable Gate Array". In essence, it is an ASIC but extra wiring and logic allows you to reconfigure the FPGA to contain a digital circuit over and over again. Both types of chips n...

(*) dVLSI is short for digital VLSI. First, let's assume the old school "career" is still a thing for the coming decade. Second, let's assume you are not defining growth as the vertical rise in a big company. Before you say anything, becoming a manager, director and VP is commendable. Because, shit always runs downhill, it is smart to be on the top of the hi...

The three musketeers were actually four, did you know that? D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. Yeah, I googled that. Busted. Soit. Like the three musketeers, HDL code comes in two forms most designers can come up with. There is a third form, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The FIRST Now, a recently graduated engineer will not touch any RTL design ...

There is no technical reason to be physically present for 100% of the time for FPGA work. (I am not affiliated with any brand mentioned below) As a poor lonesome dVLSI engineer, I wanted to control my dev boards from a distance. Hence, I hooked up a Raspberry Pi and a cheap RF transmitter to be able to send out click on/off commands. I still use it today, th...

ASIC verification is about verifying the design under test. Hence the experience should not really cover, design, synthesis, STA, DFT, just when it touches verification . You can ask questions related to this but that would be extra experience, a verification engineer verifies. To find out if a verification engineer is junior or senior, you let him or her ta...

I ordered the MK3 kit first, later I ordered the MK3 to MK3S upgrade kit. But it all started out as an MK3. MK3 kit assembly. The MK3 kit is much better then the MK2S kit I assembled in June 2017. I own a BQ Hephestos 2 as well, I disassembled it for pieces. But it has a similar more sturdy frame, the XY plane is screwed onto the XZ vertical plane. Both side...

Programming or not? I don’t like the word programming languages. Even though digital VLSI designers cod in an HDL (verilog, VHDL, systemverilog), it is hardware that they implement, not software. It looks software but in fact it isn’t. There are limitations on the operators and constructs that a synthesis tool can infer from a HDL file. Thus a digital HW des...

What is an ASIC? An ASIC, an application specific IC or chip is targeted towards a use case (or use cases). It means it is specifically designed functionality which can be sold in high volume. An ASIC consists of analog and/or digital functionality connected to the pads of the chip. These pads are connected via bond wires to the pins visible outside a chip ....

What is an ASIC designer? A digital VLSI engineer starts his or her career usually as a verification resource. Verification exposes you to the HDL language. Hardware description languages like VHDL and verilog. The difference in syntax between behavioural code and RTL implementations is important. Because, the designation "RTL" (register transfer level) mean...

What is VLSI? Very Large Scale Integration = analog and digital design for integrated circuits by combining transistors into analog or digital functionality. There are pure analog chips, pure digital chips and mixed-signal chips. First of all, analog design is mainly manual work and simulation. Digital on the other hand is via a high level description (HDL) ...

You need to hire a new resource for your project. What would be the important considerations? Cost? Quality? Cost versus quality? Would you hire a freelancer? Or would you hire an employee? Would you choose an employee over a freelancer because that is cheaper? Let's do a comparison and find out. 1) Cost comparison of a new resource We need to compare apples...

MK2S kit I ordered the MK2S assembly kit and assembled it successfully. It took more than 8 hours, but it was a great learning experience. Especially the perpendicular X-, Y- and Z-axis was really challenging. Mainly due to the XZ plane (vertical) sturdy frame and the XY plane threaded rods. The latter has nuts and washers with a certain distance before and ...