18/10/2015 (5) What are good ways to learn to get better at digital design? ­ Quora 53 FOLLOWERS VLSI: What are good ways to learn to get better at RELATED QUESTIONS digital design? What should be the way of approach one should adhere to, in order to get into a Re­Ask Follow 53 Comment Share Downvote good VLSI company other than learning Veri... Last asked: 22 Jul 2013 Which suits me better, and which has Ishan Saini better scope in future: VLSI or any offer QUESTION TOPICS Add Bio • Make Anonymous with good pay? Semiconductor Write your answer, or answer later I am not a beginner. How should I Companies proceed in digital VLSI design? (Startups) How can I learn analog VLSI Design from VHDL 5 Answers scratch on my own using help from online materials and books? Digital Electronics Kiran Bulusu, Semiconductor expert & Technologist 3.1k Views • Kiran has 20+ answers in VLSI. What are the required subjects to learn to Verilog become a VLSI digital IC engineer? Short answer is by applying what you learned..But I guess this is not what you Semiconductors wanted to know when you posted the qn. Try to participate in opencores While designing a Synchronous FIFO in projects..get an account in Page on Upverter , engage in public projects, build Digital VLSI Design environment, what VLSI your own electronic ckts...try it with arduino and then with raspberry pi or are the issues in FIFO and how do I solve thos... Edit Topics better raspberry pi with arduino shield...In context of VLSI design, there are tons of resources on google..now a days every univ has coursework on digital What is the best way to learn Digital design either at undergrad or at graduate level..I answered few qns on Quora VLSI design? QUESTION STATS itself on the same topic... What are good ways to learn how to Views 7,633 design High­Voltage SO I semiconductor But unless you know how to build and program simple ckts in practice , Followers 53 devices? everything else is useless... Edits Written 26 Jul 2013 • View Upvotes How difficult would it be to take an introduction to a VLSI (undergraduate) Upvote 18 Downvote Comment 1 Share 1 course at the same time as a digital design co... Varun Nagpal • Request Bio Can somebody suggest me few good 1.7k Views colleges for getting a Masters degree in field of VLSI Design? Well, I guess I also want to do the same. Its a no easy task to do. More Related Questions Digital design(RTL) is not an isolated activity and there are lots of side areas that one might need to touch upon while doing so. These could be ability to understand algorithms and write code (reference implementation), familiarity (or ability to understand) of subjects such as signal processing, communication, computer architecture, compilers, Networking, analog electronics, cryptography, information theory etc. Most of these other subjects are domain areas which require digital design implementations Also there are lot of areas in digital design that many books simply donot spend time on. Those are the grey areas which are hard to learn and requires R&D (or just ask on Quora/stackoverflow) and come with practice/experience only. These are the skills which differentiates expert digital designers from novice Here are my suggestions and the way I am trying to do it. First you should commit yourself to read quality material and to practice on regular basis. There are many resources( I will suggest some in the end) available. But its important to start and stick to one HDL language initially and master it. Second, you should try to get hands­on on the tools of the trade. Buy a decent FPGA board such as Xilinx Zynq SoC based board. Altera also has SoC based FPGA boards (Cylone V). Most boards come up with a Modeslim simulator and a vendor/device specific HDL(RTL) synthesis tools. I would also like to mention SmartFusion2 SoC boards from Microsemi that comes with a free Synplify pro license(quality tool for synthesis). When you work in a company, you are also expected to be comfortable using tools such as oscilloscope, signal https://www.quora.com/Very­large­scale­integration/What­are­good­ways­to­learn­to­get­better­at­digital­design 1/4 18/10/2015 (5) What are good ways to learn to get better at digital design? ­ Quora generators, logic analyzers, multimeters, etc. Most of these tools can be bought(not very expensive except oscilloscope and signal generator). You can always go for second hand equipments if things out of budget. Third, you should build skills from bottom­up i.e. first build basic digital circuits or building blocks, try to cover as many of them. This will make you comfortable with basic stuff and give confidence to move up the ladder. Once you have done that, start building something of medium complexity such as Peripheral (UART, I2C, SPI), Memory controllers, FIR filter, ALUs, 8­bit ISA Microprocessor etc. From there on you can explore bigger designs such as Audio/Video Codecs, Pipelined 32­bit mult­cycle processor, Cryptography algorithms, Micro­architecture circuits. Going step­by­step is the key. Lastly, read less and DIY more and have fun while doing all this. Just dont write RTL and simulate in Modelsim, please run/debug on the board in real­ time. Hands­on hands­on..practice practice..fun fun...all that matters. Pre­Basic Books ­ Fundamentals of Logic Design by Charles Roth Basic RTL Books (VHDL/Verilog) ­ RTL hardware using VHDL ­ Pong Chu ­ FPGA Prototyping by VHDL Examples ­ Pong Chu ­ Circuit design and simulation with VHDL ­ Pedroni ­ FPGA Prototyping by VERILOG Examples Pong Chu ­ Advanced Digital Design with the Verilog HDL ­ Ciletti General Books (Systemverilog/VHDL and for Higher level understanding ) ­ Digital design and Computer Architecture ­ Harris & Harris ­ Top­down VLSI design by Hubert Kaeslin which covers FPGA/ASIC front­ end flow ­ A practical introduction to HW/SW codesign ­ Patrick Schaumont(2nd ed) Topic specific books ­ FSM in Hardware (VHDL/SystemVerilog) by Pedroni ­ Constraining designs for Synthesis and Timing Analysis ­ Digital Design of Signal Processing Systems ­ Khan ­ High level synthesis Blue book Grey areas ­ Simulation only HDL constructs vs Synthesis only HDL constructs ­ Mixed Hdl coding ­ Reading data­sheets, schematics ­ Timed and Concurrent FSMs ­ Applying Verification concepts to create good Testbenches ­ In­circuit debugging (Chipscope on Xilinx and Signal tap on Altera ) ­ Clock domain crossing ­ Deriving clocks(PLL) ­ Handling asynchronous data/control signals ­ Creating and Integrating IPs ­ Creating SoC buses and attaching IPs to them ­ Interaction between FPGA and firmware C code ­ Interfacing FPGA with external components (ADC, DAC or uController SDRAM etc) ­ Constraining Designs (SDC) for Synthesis and Timing Closure ­ Writing TCL scripts and Perl scripts for automating tool flow ­ Understanding trade­offs (circuit speed vs area ) ­ Logic synthesis concepts and how different synthesis/simulation tool work internally ­ High Level Synthesis (Algorithm to RTL mapping) is a great to have skill ­ TLM(Transaction level modeling) ­ HW/SW Co­design: partitioning algorithm implementation effectively between software(micro­controller or application processor) and hardware(fpga/asic) PS: Seems like I wrote this answer more for myself then the guy who asked this question. https://www.quora.com/Very­large­scale­integration/What­are­good­ways­to­learn­to­get­better­at­digital­design 2/4 18/10/2015 (5) What are good ways to learn to get better at digital design? ­ Quora Updated 18 May • View Upvotes Upvote 45 Downvote Comments 2+ Share 5 Search Pasquale Ferrara, Ph.D. student doing reseHaormche in ElectrWonricte Design Notifications Ishan Ask Question Automation 2.3k Views • Pasquale has 50+ answers in VLSI. Please refresh this page to receive new updates. See Pasquale Ferrara's answer to I am not a beginner. How should I proceed in digital VLSI design? and Pasquale Ferrara's answer to Embedded systems or VLSI design?. Do not take up Kiran Bulusu's suggestions. If you wanna design embedded systems, use design methodologies like application­specific instruction­set processors (ASIP) and contemporary techniques for hardware/software co­design and co­verification. The stuff that Kiran mentioned won't help you get high­end R&D jobs in digital design. Updated 20 Jan • View Upvotes Upvote 13 Downvote Comment Share 1 Shubham Agarwal, VHDL­coding = NOT (programming) 1.4k Views I would recommend beginning with the following : 1. Reading basic Digital Design Book like Morris Mano 2. Referring some online course material like MIT Opencourseware 3. Applying these into simple projects by using projects downloaded from simple websites like vlsi­expert, asic world and testbench (Please google these websites) 4. Use a open source simulator and synthesizer to implement. Written 2 May 2014 • View Upvotes Upvote 4 Downvote Comment 1 Share Arunkumar Mourougappane, Job Seeker.....Enthusiast.....Interested in interesting stuff :P 1.2k Views Doing projects that's a way... You get better and modern exposure compared to reading books... For an example, you learn about basic gates, adder's, clocking, data holding and a few more when you try out a simple project like a wallace tree multiplier, A four­bit ALU of a microprocessor, etc. Projects shorten your learning curve. Updated 20 Jan • View Upvotes Upvote 3 Downvote Comment Share 1 Answer Collapsed (Why?) Top Stories from Your Feed https://www.quora.com/Very­large­scale­integration/What­are­good­ways­to­learn­to­get­better­at­digital­design 3/4 18/10/2015 (5) What are good ways to learn to get better at digital design? ­ Quora https://www.quora.com/Very­large­scale­integration/What­are­good­ways­to­learn­to­get­better­at­digital­design 4/4.