By MARTY LEVINE
Designing new semiconductor circuits is as complicated as designing a new car, says In Hee Lee, electrical and computer engineering faculty member in the Swanson School of Engineering. It can take hundreds of people (designers of chip architecture, logic and layout, to name a few) working on the same design at once, with the latest circuit design tools, to manufacture a new chip.
Swanson classes need to train students to work with the same commercially available design tools used in industry, Lee says. Students also need to practice working in teams and communicating across all design professionals.
That’s the reasoning behind Lee’s winning proposal to this year’s Innovation in Education Awards, one of seven chosen by the Provost’s Advisory Council on Instructional Excellence.
Lee designed his proposal “so students can use the same environment as the semiconductor company and be ready to become a leader in a semiconductor company after graduation,” he says.
The proposed changes to four current electrical and computer engineering courses (including Microelectronic Circuits and Analog Circuit Design), and potentially a new course, are aimed at undergraduates and graduate students. Right now, getting ready for a job in the semiconductor industry takes extra training after graduation. Lee’s project will add experiential, discipline-based activities, using more advanced technology — those commercial models and design tools — letting students try semiconductor circuit design ideas and then evaluate their performances.
The project will create 20 new hands-on lab tutorials and five team projects for semiconductor circuit design, introducing advanced topics to students. The project also intends to develop a new semiconductor circuit design certificate program for graduate students, although Lee cautions that will take a year or two longer than the rest of the changes.
The new labs and team projects will teach students to analyze circuit performance and scale prototypes, from simulating properties of circuits on a computer to making physical prototypes to see if the real device matches the simulation. Such work in past classes has used open-source tools that are not as up-to-date as commercial tools, Lee points out. Students really need experience on those tools currently in use in companies where they will be seeking careers.
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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