Invitation to Participate in VSDOpen2020

Plenty of intriguing email lands in my inbox about webinars, webcasts and other sundry industry events. While all are tempting, there are not enough days in a month to explore them all. Most are passed by and forgotten about.

That changed several months ago with an interesting email from VLSI System Design, a company based in Bangalore, India, that specializes in training students in chip design. During discussions with the founders, I learned about a virtual conference they were producing in October. This caught my attention and held it, so much so that the ESD Alliance, the SEMI Foundation and SEMI are collaborating with its organizers.

The event I’m referring to is VSDOpen2020, a free, online event Saturday, October 10. It starts at 8am IST (India Standard Time) or 7:30pm PDT and runs until 2pm IST or 1:30am PDT. While that may be inconvenient for those of us in the US, sessions will be recorded and available a week later at a small fee.

VSDOpen2020’s theme is the practical aspects of designing analog IP using freely available resources. Considered the pioneer of the semiconductor industry’s online conferences, VSDOpen2020 is a one-day virtual online event, featuring three keynote speakers:

• Jan Rabaey, the Donald O. Pederson Distinguished Professorship at the University of California at Berkeley, will offer a look at “Computation in the Post-Moore Era: Reflecting on the Role of Open Source”
• Naveed Sherwani, chairman, CEO and president of SiFive, will describe “RISC-V and open source hardware –– A golden opportunity for the India semiconductor industry”
• Michael Wishart, Co-Founder and CEO of Efabless, will address “Applying Community Models to ICs: Why and How”

Now in its third year, the conference will showcase semiconductor IP designed by students, provide educational tracks and research demonstrations, and five IP designer track sessions. An industry talk by Jeremy Bennett, chief executive of Embecosm, will detail “A brief history of open hardware: learning from the free and open source software movement.” Sunita Verma of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology will give a presentation on India’s initiatives in electronic system design and manufacturing. Attendees also can expect networking opportunities where designers, researchers, tool developers and students can mingle in a virtual setting.

For those who want to go deeper into the open-source phenomenon, three lab-based workshops using a cloud platform will be held in the three days leading up to the event. The first, “Open Source EDA Tool Development” will be led by Tim Edwards, senior vice president at Efabless. Steve Hoover, founder of Redwood EDA, will present “RISC-V Microarchitecture transaction-level (TL) Verilog,” while “SoC Design using OpenLane” will be taught by Mohammed Shalan, associate professor at American University in Cairo. While none of the three are free, the registration fee is modest.

All other registration for VSDOpen2020 is complimentary. It can be found here. And, while you’re at it, check out the full program for more information about specific sessions.

Kudos to VLSI System Design, organizer of the yearly VSDOpen2020, who is making a name for itself by providing global online courses at low cost to train semiconductor chip designers. Its mission neatly corresponds to the SEMI Foundation’s focus on workforce development and its goal to create trained chip designers, a huge challenge to ensure a strong workforce of chip designers to turn out new designs. As of today, thousands of positions in the semiconductor industry go unfilled.

Events such as VSDOpen2020 highlight the vast opportunities for chip designers that will in turn attract, secure and retain skilled talent. The ESD Alliance, the SEMI Foundation and SEMI are pleased to collaborate with VLSI System Design in promoting this event and encourage you to participate.

As always, please contact me if you have questions about the ESD Alliance or SEMI. I can be reached at bsmith@semi.org.

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