Re: Help from knowledged ppl on choosing VLSI specialization
VLSI is too huge a field to specialize in everything.
In general it is broadly divided as Front End and Back End.
Front End is again divided as
a. Design
b. Verification
Although in some companies designers do verification, both are specialized jobs and need specialists specific to what they do.
Design is again split as Micro-Architecture, rtl design, synthesis and static timing analysis.
Verification is there as HDL based verification, PLI based verification and HVL based verification. All of these need to be covered.
Backend is the rest of the stuff, from netlist to tapeout. The netlist generated from synthesis is taken through the backend flow to get gds2.
Beyond backend is the silicon bringup, and validation.
There are also DFT, DFM apart from the above.
You can also take a detour into FPGA from the ASIC backend if you are working in FPGA based designs. FPGAs are recently making a lot of attration as the capabilities of FPGAs are on the rise.
Ooof so, VLSI is a huge huge field with lots of specialized jobs.
Frontend obviously has the most number of engineers.
So my opinion you need to firm up your electronics fundementals and try out the front end course. where I believe the opportunites are more. Go through all the institutes and their course content before deciding. Dont decide between two or three courses offered by the same institute.
And ofcourse as ljxpjpjljx mentioned in the above post there is analog design, which is a totally different game
Cheers,
eChipDesign.