Written Test

Mentor Graphics exam was completely a subjective one. The questions asked can be put under 3 headings:

1. C [ long questions. Difficult.  ]
2. Analytical questions [Medium difficulty level]
3. Digital Design [comparatively easy questions]

All the questions were SUBJECTIVE !


Interview

More interested in students who are good at data structures. And Of course you know in EDA tool companies what your work will be.

Note

All the students who appeared for written got a cap and a fairly good pen, of course with their brand name in it.

And if you make it to the second round of the interview you get a memory card, again the brand name sustains.

And finally if you crack you get a 16.6 LPA CTC !!!

First things first.

The Profile

It said R & D engineer. Sounds terrific, right?

But don't know what they placed for. At the interview level they asked only puzzles or ( some "chit chatting" according to my batchmates)

They placed students ( only 1 from VLSI ) to work on their emulators for FPGAs. If you are thinking what are emulators now, just GOOGLE it :)


Written Test 

1. Aptitude - 16 questions                
Tough

2. C            - 12 questions
Covers function pointers and pointers

3. Digital   - 8   questions                  
I thought it was fairly easy. But i got it all wrong!!! according to interviewer [ shit happens ].

Subjective question was very easy. It was as follows.

Given F=ABC+BC~D+~ABC
(A) make the truth table
(B) minimize the logic expression
(C) find the minimum # NAND gates required to implement it


Depends on your luck :)

I was shown  a circuit and asked to design the same in verilog.

Also, was asked some questions related computer architecture. Some guys were asked basic digital questions. And some others interview was strictly based on their project.

                 

In this article we are trying to consolidate and bring to you some excellent articles that came up online, which annunciate the resent developments in the field of semiconductor.

So here we go :

Air-gaps in Copper Interconnects for Logic

This article talks about the use of copper and latest findings in copper as interconnect. The main attraction of the article is the way it tells us the findings. Starts with the findings of Mark Bohr of Intel in 1995 and compares the RC delay for various materials as interconnect. And proceeds towards the latest findings. 

You may get answers for your questions like "How many metal layers did INTEL use in 14nm microprocessors?"

Enjoy it!

Xilinx System Generator provides a set of Simulink blocks (models) for several hardware operations that could be implemented on various Xilinx FPGAs. These blocks can be used to simulate the functionality of the hardware system using Simulink environment. The nature of most DSP applications requires floating point format for data representation. While this is easy to implement on several computer systems running high level modeling software such as Simulink, it is more challenging in the hardware world due to the complexity of the implementation of floating point arithmetic. These challenges increase with portable DSP systems where more restricting constraints are applied to the system design. For these reasons Xilinx System Generator uses fixed point format to represent all numerical values in the system. System generator provides some blocks to transform data provided from the software side of the simulation environment (in our case it is Simulink) and the hardware side (System Generator blocks).

An introduction : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XcH9SjGX8Y
How to start a design with system generator : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCmL0LvDNFg

From MATLAB and Simulink to FPGAs in Five Easy Steps : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yapF8MLWORY

1. Sequential block with blocking assignments
The statements in a sequential block are processed in the order they are specified. A statement is executed only after its preceding statement completes execution. If delay or event control is specified, it is relative to the simulation time when the previous statement in the block completed execution.


2. Sequential block with non-blocking assignments
If no regular delays are specified then the right-hand expressions of all non-blocking statements are evaluated then the assignments are performed according to intra-assignment delays. If regular delay controls are specified then the execution order of non-blocking assignments is defined by regular delay controls.


3. Parallel block with blocking assignments
In case of parallel blocks all the statements start to execute at time 0. However the 
sequence of statements is still being taken into account. That is the variables used in each succeeding statement take the values assigned to them in preceding statements.

4. Parallel block with non-blocking assignments
In this case all the statements start to execute at time 0 and the right-hand expressions of all statements are evaluated immediately provided that there are no regular delays. It means that the variables used in each succeeding statement does not take the values assigned to them in preceding statements.

So summarizing all these cases one can say that by blocking/non-blocking statements it is controlled whether the values of variables assigned to them in preceding statements are used in succeeding statements or not. And by the Sequential/Parallel blocks it is controlled whether the simulation time is relative to the time when previous statement completed it's execution or to the time when the 
block was entered.


thanks to : http://www.edaboard.com/thread103924.html

Here we will be talking about the subjects that are normally not included in the curriculum for Microelectronics and VLSI Design people, yet important for them as their job life progresses.

1. Computer Organisation and Architecture

Computer architecture is a set of disciplines that describe the functionality, organization and implementation of computer systems. Some definitions of architecture define it as describing the capabilities and programming model of a computer but not a particular implementation. Some others say computer architecture involves instruction set architecture design, microarchitecture design, logic design, and implementation.

One of the best tutorial available free online is : https://www.youtube.com/user/cmu18447alt/playlists


2. Operating System Course

For operating systems by P K Biswas sir
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLDC70psjvq5hIT0kfr1sirNuees0NIbG

3. Understanding of Unix Shell scripting

Tutorial : http://www.freeos.com/guides/lsst/

4. Perl/ Python proficiency

For most VLSI engineers, atleast for all the back end folk, pattern matching is probably the most used and important functionality of PERL.

For instance, lets say you have a huge timing report consisting of say 100k paths and you are only interested in the paths that meet timing, you can write a small perl script to extract information relevant to such paths(start point,end point, launch and capture clocks,cells delays in these paths,  etc.). Its easy to see that to do this manually is next to impossible. 

Tutorial : https://www.perl.org/books/beginning-perl/

MOS
M. Annaratone, Digital CMOS Circuit Design, Kluwer, 1986.
T. Dillinger, VLSI Engineering, Prentice Hall, 1988.
E. Elmasry, ed., Digital MOS Integrated Circuits, IEEE Press, 1981.
E. Elmasry, ed., Digital MOS Integrated Circuits II, IEEE Press, 1992.
L. Glasser and D. Dopperpuhl, The Design and Analysis of VLSI Circuits, Addison-Wesley, 1985.
A. Kang and Leblebici, CMOS Digital Integrated Circuits, 2nd Ed., McGraw-Hill, 1999.
C. Mead and L. Conway, Introduction to VLSI Systems, Addison-Wesley, 1980.
K. Martin, Digital Integrated Circuit Design, Oxford University Press, 2000.
D. Pucknell and K. Eshraghian, Basic VLSI Design, Prentice Hall, 1988.
M. Shoji, CMOS Digital Circuit Technology, Prentice Hall, 1988.
J. Uyemura, Circuit Design for CMOS VLSI, Kluwer, 1992.
H. Veendrick, MOS IC’s: From Basics to ASICS, VCH, 1992.
Weste and Eshraghian, Principles of CMOS VLSI Design, Addison-Wesley, 1985, 1993.

High-Performance Design
K. Bernstein et al, High Speed CMOS Design Styles, Kluwer Academic, 1998.
A. Chandrakasan, F. Fox, and W. Bowhill, ed., Design of High-Performance Microprocessor Circuits, IEEE Press, 2000.
M. Shoji, High-Speed Digital Circuits, Addison-Wesley, 1996.


Low-Power Design
A. Chandrakasan and R. Brodersen, ed., Low-Power Digital CMOS Design, IEEE Press, 1998.
J. Rabaey and M. Pedram, ed., Low-Power Design Methodologies, Kluwer Academic, 1996.
G. Yeap, Practical Low-Power CMOS Design, Kluwer Academic, 1998.


Memory Design
K. Itoh, VLSI Memory Chip Design, Springer, 2001.
B. Prince, Semiconductor Memories, Wiley, 1991.
B. Prince, High Performance Memories, Wiley, 1996.
D. Hodges, Semiconductor Memories, IEEE Press, 1972.

Interconnections and Packaging
H. Bakoglu, Circuits, Interconnections, and Packaging for VLSI, Addison-Wesley, 1990.
W. Dally and J. Poulton, Digital Systems Engineering, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
E. Friedman, ed., Clock Distribution Networks in VLSI Circuits and Systems, IEEE Press, 1995.
J. Lau et al, ed., Electronic Packaging: Design, Materials, Process, and Reliability, McGraw-Hill,
1998.


Design Tools and Methodologies
V. Agrawal and S. Seth, Test Generation for VLSI Chips, IEEE Press, 1988D. Clein, CMOS IC Layout, Newnes, 2000.
G. De Micheli, Synthesis and Optimization of Digital Circuits, McGraw-Hill, 1994.
S. Rubin, Computer Aids for VLSI Design, Addison-Wesley, 1987.
J. Uyemura, Physical Design of CMOS Integrated Circuits Using L-Edit, PWS, 1995.
A. Vladimirescu, The Spice Book, John Wiley and Sons, 1993.
W. Wolf, Modern VLSI Design, Prentice Hall, 1998.


Bipolar and BiCMOS
A. Alvarez, BiCMOS Technology and Its Applications, Kluwer, 1989.
M. Elmasry, ed., BiCMOS Integrated Circuit Design, IEEE Press, 1994.
S. Embabi, A. Bellaouar, and M. Elmasry, Digital BiCMOS Integrated Circuit Design, Kluwer,
1993.
Lynn et al., eds., Analysis and Design of Integrated Circuits, McGraw-Hill, 1967.


General
J. Buchanan, CMOS/TTL Digital Systems Design, McGraw-Hill, 1990.
H. Haznedar, Digital Micro-Electronics, Benjamin/Cummings, 1991.
D. Hodges and H. Jackson, Analysis and Design of Digital Integrated Circuits, 2nd ed., McGrawHill, 1988.
M. Smith, Application-Specific Integrated Circuits, Addison-Wesley, 1997.
R. K. Watts, Submicron Integrated Circuits, Wiley, 1989.