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Resource site for IC design engineers launched

ByteK Designs Inc, an electronic design automation consulting and training company, has launched a Web site for integrated circuit design engineers.

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ICtips.com claims to be one of the first Web sites to provide free online training for VLSI (very large scale integration) design engineers.

The site logs over 20,000 hits a day and is aimed at engineers at all levels in the semiconductor and systems industry.

This includes entry-level engineers, technical marketing engineers, engineering managers and design architects.

Pran Kurup, co-founder and president of ByteK, says, "We believe we are among the first to offer online design knowledge and classes that system designers can take at their own pace. Our goal is to get designers to come to the site often and use its resources. At our site, design teams or new tools users can be trained cost effectively and without travelling."

ICtips.com offers online ASIC (application specific integrated circuits) design training, design advice, discussion groups, quizzes and online interactive classes for Synopsys's design compiler addresses.

The two-year-old ByteK Designs Inc runs the site. It provides consulting and training services and add-in software utilities for EDA and semiconductor and systems companies.

Taher Abbasi, Ricky Bedi and Pran Kurup founded the company.

Kurup elaborates "We started off as a design services and training company for the semiconductor industry. We had worked at leading design automation companies and semiconductor companies before starting our company. With the growth of the Internet and the frenzy behind e-business we decided to adapt our business to the Web and that lead to the birth of ICtips."

ICtips.com offers these features:

• An ASIC synthesis class that includes animation, text, graphics, tests at the end of each module and an audio track. Students who take the class can email questions to the instructors. ByteK hopes to incorporate video and chat sessions soon.
• Quizzes that are randomly generated based on the designer's skill profile and include questions on various topics such as hardware description languages, synthesis, design for test and verification.
• 'Ask the Experts' service that answers queries about topics such as logic synthesis, design verification, test synthesis, behavioural synthesis, design methodology and USB and ARM cores.

Kurup enthuses: "The Internet makes it possible to build community sites. There is tremendous leverage in getting people with similar interests to congregate at one site. In such an environment there is so much opportunity to exchange information, learn and improve awareness by being part of a community Web site. The kind of issues facing designers of chips and developers of design automation tools are similar and it is possible to learn from others. No matter what field of expertise you are in you learn a lot from people you work with. The Internet has made it possible to extend this group of people to a worldwide group. ICtips is an idea that has been made possible by the web. It is a community site for systems and semiconductor industry."

ByteK hopes that the site will benefit designers and managers because it offers an alternative to more expensive and time-consuming training classes. However, designers need to register first before they can use most of the site's features.

ByteK has reserved a locker for each registrant. Here they can update their personal profile and review the statistics on their class and quiz scores.

The ASIC synthesis using Synopsys's design compiler is currently free and access to the design compiler tool is not required.

ByteK soon plans to introduce proprietary training courses such as coding styles for synthesis, design for test classes and customised courses for EDA companies and educational institutions.

For these, designers can pay online via credit card. Alternately, corporations could sign up in bulk for their employees.

Kurup promises to offer volume discounts for corporations and also partner with universities so that the payment for the courses need not be necessarily through credit card. "We are still in the process of identifying the different pricing models," he says.

Kurup is thrilled with the response from Indian designers. "We have Indian engineers actively using the site. We feel that this is a terrific means to bring the knowledge of semiconductor design to engineers in places like India were there is tremendous strength in numbers but far fewer resources. One of the biggest impediments to designers the world over is knowledge of tools and methodologies involved. This is a great way to empower the designers no matter which part of the globe they are!"

Related site: http://www.ictips.com

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