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Innovative teaching of IC design and manufacture using the Superchip platform

Innovative teaching of IC design and manufacture using the Superchip platform
Innovative teaching of IC design and manufacture using the Superchip platform
In this paper we describe how an intelligent chip architecture has allowed a large cohort of undergraduate students to be given effective practical insight into IC design by designing and manufacturing their own ICs. To achieve this, an efficient chip architecture, the “Superchip”, has been developed, which allows multiple student designs to be fabricated on a single IC, and encapsulated in a standard package without excessive cost in terms of time or resources. We demonstrate how the practical process has been tightly coupled with theoretical aspects of the degree course and how transferable skills are incorporated into the design exercise. Furthermore, the students are introduced at an early stage to the key concepts of team working, exposure to real deadlines and collaborative report writing. This paper provides details of the teaching rationale, design exercise overview, design process, chip architecture and test regime.
297-305
Wilson, Peter
8a65c092-c197-4f43-b8fc-e12977783cb3
Wilcock, Reuben
039894e9-f32d-49e0-9ebd-fb13bc489feb
Swabey, Matthew
f8c86b6e-3e61-44c8-b36a-8f6957bdc53b
McNally, Iain
a43566ee-c46a-4206-abf0-c0cbc8f19cb1
Wilson, Peter
8a65c092-c197-4f43-b8fc-e12977783cb3
Wilcock, Reuben
039894e9-f32d-49e0-9ebd-fb13bc489feb
Swabey, Matthew
f8c86b6e-3e61-44c8-b36a-8f6957bdc53b
McNally, Iain
a43566ee-c46a-4206-abf0-c0cbc8f19cb1

Wilson, Peter, Wilcock, Reuben, Swabey, Matthew and McNally, Iain (2010) Innovative teaching of IC design and manufacture using the Superchip platform. IEEE Transactions on Education, 53 (2), 297-305. (doi:10.1109/TE.2009.2017271).

Record type: Article

Abstract

In this paper we describe how an intelligent chip architecture has allowed a large cohort of undergraduate students to be given effective practical insight into IC design by designing and manufacturing their own ICs. To achieve this, an efficient chip architecture, the “Superchip”, has been developed, which allows multiple student designs to be fabricated on a single IC, and encapsulated in a standard package without excessive cost in terms of time or resources. We demonstrate how the practical process has been tightly coupled with theoretical aspects of the degree course and how transferable skills are incorporated into the design exercise. Furthermore, the students are introduced at an early stage to the key concepts of team working, exposure to real deadlines and collaborative report writing. This paper provides details of the teaching rationale, design exercise overview, design process, chip architecture and test regime.

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More information

e-pub ahead of print date: 4 August 2009
Published date: 1 May 2010
Organisations: EEE

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 267212
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/267212
PURE UUID: 4e538a18-5dde-4363-9f07-f31987d7f05a

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Date deposited: 29 Mar 2009 08:55
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 08:46

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Contributors

Author: Peter Wilson
Author: Reuben Wilcock
Author: Matthew Swabey
Author: Iain McNally

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