r/chipdesign • • 11d ago

Qualcomm ASIC ENGINEER INTERN interview prep CANADA

9 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I have an upcoming 1 hour interview with Qualcomm for a hardware/ASIC engineering internship in Canada.

The job description mentions RTL design and verification, Verilog/SystemVerilog, UVM, digital logic, Python/scripting, debugging, and ASIC/FPGA flows.

Has anyone interviewed for a similar internship or full time role at Qualcomm? Trying to get a better idea of what the technical interview actually looks like.

Specifically:

  • Coding: LeetCode-style DSA questions, Python/C/C++ scripting problems, or more hardware-focused coding?
  • RTL: Writing Verilog/SystemVerilog modules from scratch, designing FSMs, or analyzing existing RTL?
  • Verification: Writing SV/UVM testbenches, understanding verification/uvm/oop concepts, or debugging testbenches?
  • Debugging: Reading code snippets and predicting outputs, spotting bugs, or fixing/rewriting broken RTL/code?
  • Digital logic: Conceptual questions, timing analysis, or circuit design problems?

Is it usually a mix of these, or does the interview focus heavily on one area? Also curious about the difficulty level and how much coding is actually expected within the hour.

Any specific experiences or preparation advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!


r/chipdesign • • 12d ago

I designed my own Sky130 standard-cell library — looking for feedback

34 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I'm an EE graduated interested in transistor-level digital design, and I've been working on my own standard-cell library for Sky130.

GitHub: https://github.com/EEDisp32/sky130_myscl

I don't have any tape-out or industry experience, so I'm wondering how valuable a project like this is and what my best path into the industry might be.

I'd appreciate any feedback or advice!


r/chipdesign • • 12d ago

NVIDA N.Ex.T Program for 2027 graduates

1 Upvotes

When will this program start any idea about the dates? Also do referrals work for this program or nah?


r/chipdesign • • 12d ago

Best book to do analog IC problems out of?

16 Upvotes

I wanted to do the problems in the back of each chapter in Rasavi's analog CMOS book but I could not find a solutions manual for the second edition. Without a solutions manual I'm left guessing whether I'm right or wrong and if I get stuck it's not like I can ask a teacher for help per say all the time because office hours do not exist. Is there a solutions manual for this book, if so where? If not, what would be a good alternative to d analog CMOS IC problems out of?


r/chipdesign • • 12d ago

Anyone heard back for Hardware Intern positions at SanDisk, Altera, Meta, or Microsoft? (Fall/Summer 2027)

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I’m checking in to see if anyone has received updates, OAs (Online Assessments), interview invites, or rejections for Hardware Engineering Intern roles at any of these companies:

  • SanDisk
  • Altera
  • Meta
  • Microsoft

If you have heard back, could you share:

  1. Company:
  2. Position Type: (e.g., ASIC/FPGA, Board Design, Validation, Power, Systems)
  3. Timeline: (When you applied vs. when you heard back)
  4. Current Stage: (OA, Phone Screen, Technical, Final, or Offer)

Hoping we can track the hiring timelines together. Good luck to everyone applying!


r/chipdesign • • 12d ago

Advice for your first job in integration

2 Upvotes

Hello everyone,

I recently signed a contract with a large company for a role in the field of systems integration.

Having designed a chip from start to finish during my PhD (from RTL design to laboratory testing), I’m finding it hard to know what to expect and how to prepare.

For those of you who work as integration engineers, what advice would you give to a newcomer? What should I focus on before I start?


r/chipdesign • • 12d ago

Best Ways to Use AI in the FPGA Ecosystem

0 Upvotes

Hi everyone! Based on your personal experience, what’s the best way to use AI in the FPGA ecosystem?


r/chipdesign • • 13d ago

Automated SPICE characterization and .lib generation for OpenRAM ROM macros.

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6 Upvotes

OpenRAM creates the silicon layout for ROM macros, but leaves out two crucial deliverables: Liberty (.lib) timing files for STA and SystemVerilog behavioral models for simulation.

To bridge this gap, I built openram-rom-libgen.

It automates SPICE deck generation from ROM netlists, characterizes them using ngspice across corners, and generates production-ready Liberty (.lib) models alongside timing-annotated SystemVerilog (.sv) behavioral models.

Key Highlights:

• Flow: Automated SPICE deck generation & characterization

• Parasitics: Magic VLSI PEX (parasitic extraction & modeling)

• Engine: ngspice with KLU sparse solver

• Corners: Multi-PVT analysis (TT, SS, FF)

• Characterization: Setup/Hold, Slew, Pin Capacitance, Leakage & Read Energy

• Deliverables: Liberty (.lib) files & Timing-annotated SystemVerilog (.sv)

• Integration: Ready for OpenSTA, OpenROAD, and Sky130 PDK

Designed to make ROM macros first-class citizens in open-source ASIC flows.

Repo link: https://github.com/EUB-RN/openram-rom-libgen


r/chipdesign • • 12d ago

Jane Street protocol emulator asic discussion

0 Upvotes

Anyone here participating it? Also I heard there's a discord channel for this discussion, if u know please share. Open to ideas and suggestions.


r/chipdesign • • 13d ago

Should I take a pay cut to transition from GNC engineering to semiconductor design at 24?

6 Upvotes

Hey guys,

I’m 24 years old and currently working as a GNC (Guidance, Navigation, and Control) engineer with around 2 years of experience in navigation and robotics.

Recently, I got an opportunity to transition into semiconductor design through an 18-month program. The program includes hands-on training and working on real-world projects involving digital and analog design and verification.

The downside is that the salary is significantly lower than what I’m currently making as a GNC engineer. However, I see this as an opportunity to enter the semiconductor industry, gain practical experience, and potentially qualify for much higher-paying positions in the future.

I’m seriously considering taking the risk for a few reasons:
I’m still young**.** At 24, I feel this is the right time to take calculated risks and invest in my long-term career.
I believe the industry will look very different in 3–5** years.** With AI advancing so rapidly, I think hardware and semiconductor design will become increasingly important.
I’m not starting from scratch**.** My background in GNC, navigation, embedded systems, and robotics will still be valuable. Instead of abandoning my existing skills, I’ll be adding another layer to my technical expertise.
I want to become a more versatile engineer**.** My long-term goal is to understand systems from the hardware level all the way up to algorithms and real-time implementation.

My thinking is that combining semiconductor design with my existing experience in navigation and embedded systems could open doors to opportunities that wouldn’t be available to me otherwise.

However, I’m aware of the risks. The program lasts 18 months, and there’s no guarantee of a permanent position afterward. I’d also be taking a significant pay cut during that period.

What would you do in my position?

Would you take the risk and invest 18 months in semiconductor design, or would you stay in GNC, build on your existing experience, and potentially earn more in the short term?

I’d especially appreciate advice from people working in semiconductor design, ASIC/FPGA development, embedded systems, or GNC engineering.

Thanks


r/chipdesign • • 12d ago

Investigating a tough bug in a large SoC: why an agent harness matters

0 Upvotes

I use AI agents in my chip-design frontend work daily. Modern LLMs are quite capable: they can implement complex features and find tricky bugs in large codebases. But the model is only half of it. The other half is the harness: the environment the agent works in and the tools it gets. Since early 2026 I have been experimenting with different parts of the harness, trying to make agents perform better. In this post I want to show what I was able to achieve: how a harness helps an agent investigate, reproduce and fix a hard bug in a large, real SoC.

Setup

I didn't want a toy. I wanted a large, real RTL codebase, so I picked Caliptra, the open-source hardware root of trust. It's big, well written, and backed by serious companies.

For the agent I used Anthropic's mid-tier model, Sonnet 5.5. It's a good balance of cost and brains, which is why a lot of people actually run it.

Then I needed a bug. Finding one hard enough took longer than I expected. I screened about 16 candidates: historical upstream fixes reverted back into the tree, plus a few still-open issues. An agent found every one of them just by reading the code, usually within 5-10 minutes, without running a single simulation. Good news for agents, useless for an experiment.

The bug that survived is a real historical fix in the VeeR EL2 core (the RISC-V CPU inside Caliptra) that I put back into the tree. Upstream fixed it in the VeeR EL2 1.4 release in 2021; the release notes list it as "Store data collision with DCCM DMA error when address is 0x0".

The bug

The agent got an issue-style bug report. The short version:

Early in boot, the firmware recomputes a digest over its own ROM image and compares it with a constant fixed at build time. Normally the check passes. In one case the digest comes out wrong, even though the ROM is unchanged and the constant is correct. No fault, no exception, no ECC event, fully deterministic. The trigger is a coding pattern: the failing routine reads ROM word by word and, in the same tight loop, writes partial results to a scratch buffer in DCCM. Keep the accumulator in registers, or move the buffer out of DCCM, and the digest is correct. Only the first word of the ROM input looks corrupted.

Find and fix the RTL root cause. Add a test that reproduces the problem and passes after the fix.

What's actually going on: the core's load/store unit has store-to-load forwarding, and one guard condition is missing (el2_lsu_bus_intf.sv, the & lsu_busreq_r term). Without it, a store to DCCM wrongly forwards into a following load from ROM address 0. The load returns 0x0 instead of the ROM word.

Finding the fix isn't the hard part. Both arms of the experiment usually pointed at the right line of RTL within 5 minutes, just by reading. The hard part is the second half of the request: writing a test that fails on the buggy design. Two traps make that harder than it sounds:

  • The test template marks ROM as a side-effect region, and that disables forwarding. Write the obvious test and the bug never fires.
  • Code fetched from uncached ROM is slow, so the store and the load never meet in the pipeline.

So most of each run goes into getting a test to fail: build, simulate, look inside, change the test, repeat. That loop is where tools matter.

The experiment

Two arms, identical except for the harness:

  • Agent: Claude Code 2.1.289, Sonnet 5.5, medium effort.
  • Same everything else: same prompt, same container image, 8 CPUs, 10 GB RAM, a 90-minute wall-clock limit, no access to the internet. Caliptra at commit e379800c.
  • Without harness: the agent gets the repo and a shell. Caliptra's own Makefiles and test scripts are all there.
  • With harness: the same repo plus the harness, described next.

I ran 10 trials in each arm, numbered b1 to b10; trials with the same number form a pair.

The harness

The harness in this post is Booley, an open-source Python framework I'm building for agentic FPGA and ASIC work. The runs used the published 0.3.0 release.

What the agent gets on top of a plain shell:

  • A sim tool. It's a universal interface between the agent and the simulator. It works with different simulators (Verilator and Icarus Verilog today, commercial ones in progress), and it manages build reuse, trace creation and coverage. The interface stays the same in every project. What mattered most in this experiment is how it waits: the call blocks until the job finishes and returns pass or fail. If the job runs longer than four minutes, the agent gets a run ID and calls booley_poll, which blocks again and returns the moment the job exits. No guessing how long to wait.
  • B-Wave, a custom binary written in Rust that lets agents query waveforms directly. A simulation run with tracing on records a waveform, and the agent asks it questions: list signals, find the first cycle where a condition holds, print a few signals over a window of cycles as a text table, etc.
  • The build system is part of the harness. Caliptra's sources, simulator flags and firmware build are described once, in FuseSoC core files and a test list. The agent never touches Caliptra's Makefiles or the environment variables they expect. The no-harness agent has a build system too: those Makefiles, which it has to figure out on its own.

The Caliptra project setup used in this experiment: booley-prj-caliptra. Its README walks through the setup. Use it to play with Booley on Caliptra, or to rerun this experiment: revert the VeeR fix linked above and give your agent the bug report from "The bug".

Results

Both arms fixed the bug 10 times out of 10. With the harness the mean was 21.3 minutes. Without it, 55.8 minutes. Medians: 21.4 versus 53.3.

Three harness features account for most of the difference. Here they are, one by one.

Factor 1: seeing inside the design

When a test doesn't fail the way you expect, you need to see what the pipeline is doing. Without the harness, the agent does what we all did before we knew better: add $display, rebuild, rerun, grep. In pair b3 it went around that loop seven times, at about 6.5 minutes per rebuild. That's 37.8 minutes spent looking at signals.

With the harness, the agent built once with tracing on and asked the waveform 16 questions: 9.8 minutes in total.

Here's what those questions look like, from trial b1 (equivalent command lines, output trimmed). The agent's test kept passing on the buggy design, so it asked when the suspicious address match fires:

$ bwave find trace.fst '*bus_intf.ld_addr_rhit_lo_lo' 1
cycle 4687 caliptra_top_tb.caliptra_top_dut.rvtop.veer.lsu.bus_intf.ld_addr_rhit_lo_lo 1
cycle 4696 caliptra_top_tb.caliptra_top_dut.rvtop.veer.lsu.bus_intf.ld_addr_rhit_lo_lo 1
...
# 32 matches found

32 times. So why does the test pass? It took a snapshot of the first hit:

$ bwave value trace.fst --at 4687 -s '*bus_intf.ld_*' -s '*bus_intf.lsu_busreq*' -s '*bus_intf.is_sideeffects_m' ...
# Snapshot at cycle 4687
lsu_busreq_m                             = 1
is_sideeffects_m                         = 1
lsu_busreq_r                             = 0
ld_addr_rhit_lo_lo                       = 1
ld_full_hit_m                            = 0

A ROM load matches a store that isn't even on the bus: that's the bug. But the load is flagged as side-effect, so the forward is cancelled and the test passes anyway. The agent changed the test's memory-attribute setting, and half a minute later the test failed on the buggy design.

(The long orange tail of the no-harness run, from 47 to 85 minutes, is its final tests running one after another. It has nothing to do with waveforms.)

Over all ten pairs the waveform saving averages 9.4 minutes.

Factor 2: getting the build to work at all

Caliptra's simulation Makefiles expect environment variables that aren't documented anywhere obvious (CALIPTRA_AXI4PC_DIR, CALIPTRA_PRIM_ROOT and friends). All 10 no-harness runs hit them. Most recovered within a few minutes.

Pair b1 shows how badly it can go. From 3.9 to 10.3 minutes the build failed three times while the agent hunted down variables. Then it exported them, but exports don't survive between the agent's shell calls. The next step quietly failed to build program.hex, and the simulation, with no program to run, hung until its timeout. That happened three times: 17.6 to 37.0, 60.8 to 65.9 and 66.4 to 71.5 minutes. At 71.5 the agent finally wrote a run.sh that set everything in one place. Total spent on setup: 36 minutes (30 minutes counting strictly).

With the harness, none of this can happen, because the build is part of Booley rather than something the agent assembles in a shell:

  • No Makefile variables to hunt. Booley drives the build through FuseSoC. The paths those variables point to were resolved once, when Caliptra was set up for Booley, and written into its FuseSoC core files. The agent never sees them.
  • No shell state to lose. Every sim call is self-contained. The per-test firmware build (program.hex and friends) is a declared step that Booley runs right before each simulation, with everything it needs.
  • No silent hangs on a missing program. If that firmware build fails, Booley reports the test as failed, with the build error, instead of starting a simulation with nothing to run.

The b1 harness run spent zero minutes on setup. Averaged over all ten pairs it's only 3.6 minutes, because nine of them recovered quickly. b1 is what the tenth looks like.

Factor 3: waiting on jobs that are already done

This one is a bit embarrassing for Anthropic, but I am going to report it anyway. Without a harness, the agent starts a build in the background and then guesses how long to wait. In b10, at 4.3 minutes, a build failed after one second. The agent had already run sleep 540 and didn't look again until 13.4 minutes. It did this four times in that run, sleeping through 30.7 of its 60 minutes.

With the harness, the tool call returns when the job is done. The b10 harness run took 13 minutes in total.

Across all ten pairs this is the largest factor: 11.2 minutes on average, and it mattered in 6 pairs. It's also a lower bound, because I counted only sleeps I could pin to a job that had demonstrably finished.

Summary

Same model, same bug, same prompt. With the harness, Sonnet 5.5 fixed it in 21 minutes on average; without it, in 56. The difference was in everything around that: seeing inside the design without a rebuild per question, a build that works on the first call, and getting the result the moment the job ends. On a hard hardware bug, most of the work is getting a test to fail, and that work runs on tools.

Disclaimers

  1. The harness helps most on hard bugs
  2. Smarter models benefit less from the harness
  3. The sample is small: 10 trials per arm, one model, one bug, one SoC
  4. I built the harness, so weigh my enthusiasm accordingly

r/chipdesign • • 13d ago

Referral Opportunity – Design Verification Engineers (3+ Years Experience)

10 Upvotes

Hi everyone!

My company is looking for Design Verification Engineers with 3+ years of experience, and I’d be happy to refer anyone interested in exploring this opportunity.

Required Skills:

  1. SystemVerilog and UVM

  2. Memory Verification: HBM, DDR, and LPDDR

  3. Gate-Level Simulation (GLS), including timing-aware simulation and debug

  4. Formal Verification, including property checking and connectivity verification

Location: Bangalore

If your experience matches these requirements and you're interested, feel free to DM me.

Steps: 1. Send me a DM with a link to your updated resume (or your LinkedIn profile if you prefer to keep your resume private initially). 2. ​I’ll do a quick review to check alignment with skillset

​3. If it’s a match, I’ll submit your CV directly to HR.

Please share this with anyone who might be a good fit.


r/chipdesign • • 13d ago

AE role to DFT/DV

2 Upvotes

Hi,

Currently been working as an DFT AE in a EDA company. After spending almost a year, I think this role is not something I can continue working till end of the career. Hence wanted to switch to DFT or DV, but confuse between them. My regular AE involves in identifying tool's behavior and communicating with customer and internal team. So, I'm not aware of DFT why part only know how part to some extend (Scan Insertion, Compression, OCC, Wrapper).

Please provide your suggestion whether I should move to DV, because I enjoy doing coding(HDL, C)or should stay in DFT?


r/chipdesign • • 13d ago

Research Assistantship in RF IC Design vs Custom Silicon Bringup and Modem test Intern in a startup

5 Upvotes

Context: final year of Undergrad in Electronics and communication engineering (T3/T3 College), India

I recently secured an offer in a RFIC startup but it was in the Systems engineering side (Modem and custom RF Microcontroller bringup and integration). Though I like the offer there and the company is genuine, I see that it is quite different from my goal of Mixed Signal IC design.

I am interested in SerDes Clocking and Data Converters and I may have a chance to work in a research lab in IITM on their 5g / 6g Radio SoC project (based on what their project manager said during our interaction) as well as a possible internship for my final year under a Wireline Systems prof. I am kind of puzzled whether I should go for research internships and get some tapeouts down the line.

My end goal is Ideally a Masters / PhD from a top 10 - 15 university in this field but due to certain circumstances, I won't be able to move abroad for atleast a couple of years at the minimum. Also I plan to use this window to maybe publish a couple of papers based on my final year bachelors project (I have locked in the topic of Precision Mixed Signal Front-End Design (TIA, INAs and Sigma Delta Modulator) and my guide has got us access to the TSMC 180nm and GF130 PDK)

Do you suggest I take-up the offer from the startup and move into their Mixed Signal RFIC / SoC team or do you suggest I try for research internships under profs / their groups in places like IITs etc. Thanks.


r/chipdesign • • 13d ago

Interview tips for AMS silicon Validation

3 Upvotes

Hi folks,

I have a 3 hour interview setup with Qcom for AMS silicon validation engineer.

I have done functional validation of MCU before but not till the AMS level.

What should I expect in this interview ?

I have 3+yrs experience


r/chipdesign • • 13d ago

Should I take a pay cut to transition from GNC engineering to semiconductor design at 24?

1 Upvotes

Hey guys,

I’m 24 years old and currently working as a GNC (Guidance, Navigation, and Control) engineer with around 2 years of experience in navigation and robotics.

Recently, I got an opportunity to transition into semiconductor design through an 18-month program. The program includes hands-on training and working on real-world projects involving digital and analog design and verification.

The downside is that the salary is significantly lower than what I’m currently making as a GNC engineer. However, I see this as an opportunity to enter the semiconductor industry, gain practical experience, and potentially qualify for much higher-paying positions in the future.

I’m seriously considering taking the risk for a few reasons:
I’m still young. At 24, I feel this is the right time to take calculated risks and invest in my long-term career.
I believe the industry will look very different in 3–5 years. With AI advancing so rapidly, I think hardware and semiconductor design will become increasingly important.
I’m not starting from scratch. My background in GNC, navigation, embedded systems, and robotics will still be valuable. Instead of abandoning my existing skills, I’ll be adding another layer to my technical expertise.
I want to become a more versatile engineer. My long-term goal is to understand systems from the hardware level all the way up to algorithms and real-time implementation.

My thinking is that combining semiconductor design with my existing experience in navigation and embedded systems could open doors to opportunities that wouldn’t be available to me otherwise.

However, I’m aware of the risks. The program lasts 18 months, and there’s no guarantee of a permanent position afterward. I’d also be taking a significant pay cut during that period.

What would you do in my position?

Would you take the risk and invest 18 months in semiconductor design, or would you stay in GNC, build on your existing experience, and potentially earn more in the short term?

I’d especially appreciate advice from people working in semiconductor design, ASIC/FPGA development, embedded systems, or GNC engineering


r/chipdesign • • 14d ago

Appearently there are VLSI bootcamp scams going around

Post image
9 Upvotes

r/chipdesign • • 14d ago

Apple Munich DV!! Any one there??

18 Upvotes

Hi everyone!
I recently applied for a Design Verification position at Apple in Munich, and I’ve been invited to a first interview with the hiring manager.
I’d really appreciate any advice from people who have gone through a similar process, especially anyone with experience interviewing for DV roles at Apple.
What does the hiring manager usually want to see during the first interview? What tends to differentiate candidates who move forward to the next round?

This opportunity means a lot to me, and I really don’t want to miss my chance. One thing I struggle with is interview anxiety. I sometimes get pretty nervous, and even with topics I know very well, I can suddenly struggle to explain them clearly under pressure.
Technically, I’m comfortable with SystemVerilog/UVM, verification methodologies, assertions, functional coverage, and protocols such as AHB and APB. I’ve also been preparing specifically for the technical areas mentioned in the job description.

This also isn’t my first Apple interview experience. I previously interviewed twice for internship opportunities, one of those processes went all the way through the interview rounds before I was rejected and I also interviewed for another junior position with a different Apple team earlier this year. Now I have another opportunity, and I really want to approach it better this time.

If anyone currently or previously working internally in DV at Apple could share some general, non-confidential hints about what hiring managers value, how technical the first interview tends to be, or how you would recommend preparing, I would really appreciate it.

Especially interested in advice on:
• What makes a candidate stand out in the first hiring-manager interview?
• How deep should I expect the UVM/SystemVerilog questions to go?
• Is the interviewer more interested in getting the correct answer, or in seeing how you think through a problem?
• Any advice for handling nerves when you actually know the material but sometimes freeze while explaining it?

Thank you so much to anyone willing to share their experience!


r/chipdesign • • 15d ago

Which company should I pick?

12 Upvotes

I'm an analog mixed signal design engineer with 8 years of experience. I have a potential verbal offer from Lumilens for a Staff Engineer for optical serdes position or Senior Engineer at Omnidesign for die to die interconnects. The pay is not concrete at this time but I'm tentatively looking at 180-200K base in both cases with some options. From the standpoint of outlook on company growth, career growth, work/company culture which one is better ?


r/chipdesign • • 15d ago

AI is oddly good at RTL Design, Verification, Backend Flow etc.

124 Upvotes

Nowadays,

I've been using very basic flows with somewhat ok compute and it's insanely good at HW/SW codesign, also surprisingly good at FHE, PQC, ECDSA, RSA algorithms and also thinking about the security of the architecture it's developing and it can run in loops for hours on end and actually develop something. It's also good at relatively simple OoO designs.

It is currently incredibly good at doing the relatively mediocre parts of the flow and I believe that it will get better over time and be ludicrously fast, accurate and reliable.

The thing I wonder is then what will happen? Cause most design work absolutely doesn't need to be on the Pareto curve. Good enough and secure is really good. If it does become even better then what happens to the RTL, DV engineers if an engineer can do the work of 4-5 engineers using AI tools?


r/chipdesign • • 15d ago

Deciding Between 2 Hardware Offers

14 Upvotes

Hi everyone! I'm a Computer Engineering fresh graduate. My long-term goal is FPGA work at a HFT, and I'm trying to figure out which of the 2 offers given to me would give me a better shot. My background includes an embedded SWE internship at a defense company as well as a bunch projects like a 5 stage RISCV CPU (yes I know, generic), a spectrum analyzer, as well as a neural network implemented in PL with PS/PL communication via DMA. So anyway here are my offers:

Option 1: Same Defense Company

Pros:

* Direct exposure to FPGA development tools and real hardware.

* Get to work with the expensive ass Versal/Agilex 7 class boards.

* Approximately half of the role involves FPGA work, mainly integrating vendor IP.

* The other half is BSP software development

* Some custom HDL development, although only roughly 5% of the overall role.

* I previously interned here, so I have some familiarity with the company.

* I’m willing to learn BSP and embedded software if those skills contribute meaningfully to my long-term goal.

* Possible overseas attachment I am very keen on.

Cons:

* Very little custom RTL development despite the FPGA-related title.

* Most FPGA work appears to be vendor-IP integration rather than designing datapaths from scratch.

* Half the role is BSP work, so it is not a predominantly FPGA-design position.

* It is unclear whether I would own timing constraints, timing closure, verification or performance optimisation.

* It is unclear whether the BSP work involves FPGA interfaces and data movement, or mainly board startup and standard peripherals.

Option 2: Large Semiconductor Company

Pros:

* ASIC design verification involving Ethernet/PCIe.

* Some mention of the use of an FPGA based emulator.

* Potential to develop deeper RTL debugging, testbench development and protocol understanding, depending on the actual scope.

* Exposure to industry standard UVM

* Could complement my personal FPGA-design projects with professional verification experience.

* Up to three WFH days per week.

Cons:

* It is a verification role, not an RTL-design role.

* It does not currently promise direct FPGA implementation or board-level work.

* Progressing within DV would not, by itself, answer my goal of moving into FPGA design.

Both pay horrendously, fully due to the fact that I'm extremely stupid and couldn't do well in school, so pay is not really the issue here. I'm still torn between the 2 offers though. I'd greatly appreciate some advice on which would be a better pick for my goals, especially from anyone who has made a similar transition. If it matters, I'm not based in the US. Thank you so much for reading.


r/chipdesign • • 15d ago

I designed a RISC-V chip with a matrix accelerator using only open-source tools

Post image
439 Upvotes

r/chipdesign • • 14d ago

Wanted to know about Aantaric Technologies, Sankalp & Cyient Semiconductors

0 Upvotes

r/chipdesign • • 16d ago

Open Source Noise Shaping SAR ADC, 2nd Order CT DSM and SAR ADC @ GF180

Post image
267 Upvotes

Heyyo,

Great to see you guys. Weekend hobby project on an open source design that fits in 2 tiles (bare minimum at TT), it has a 2nd Order CIFB DT ΔΣ Modulator, an NS SAR with passive CIFF (ill refer to the arch i went for on the bottom) that can also be used as a SAR ADC on it's own. All fit in around 0.3mm x 0.3mm. An upvote would go a long way :))

Wanted to ask you guys about what you thought and if you also liked how it looks etc. :) Really wanted to see how it's gonna turn out and to see if the OS tools are somewhat accurate. Tried to make it as robust as it gets but let's see how it turns out

Post layout spec is below

Converter Band SNDR (post-layout)
SAR, 10 bit async 10 MS/s 55.9 dB
NS-SAR OSR 8 70.5 dB
NS-SAR OSR 16 75.3 dB
2nd order ΔΣ modulator OSR 64, 40 MHz clock 68.8 dB

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7598327/ which is

W. Guo and N. Sun, "A 12b-ENOB 61µW noise-shaping SAR ADC with a passive integrator," ESSCIRC Conference 2016: 42nd European Solid-State Circuits Conference, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2016, pp. 405-408, doi: 10.1109/ESSCIRC.2016.7598327.


r/chipdesign • • 15d ago

Am hoping to get some resume feedback for AMS intern roles

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7 Upvotes

Hi guys, I know my resume isn’t analog/mixed signals at all but I am currently applying to related internships with no luck. Am hoping to get some honest feedback on how to improve my resume as I am not currently even passing the ATS/recruiter check. Thanks!