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Deadline Extended: Universalization of IC Design from CASS (UNIC-CASS) 2nd Edition

Deadline Extended: 21 July 2024
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UNIC-CASS

The IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS) invites you to participate in the second edition of Universalization of IC Design from CASS (UNIC-CASS) program, a structured end-to-end Integrated Circuit (IC) design-to-test experiential learning. The program aims to improve the know-how and accessibility to IC Design technologies for enthusiasts and design communities worldwide in low-to-middle-income and/or low-opportunity countries. This program is in strategic cooperation with the Solid-State Circuits Society which serves geographically-complementing locations.

There are no restrictions to designing your ideal chip on design complexity or type (digital, analog/RF, or mixed-signal). Based on the quality of their submitted chip design proposals, selected participants will get the opportunity to learn from carefully curated materials on the CASS MiLe platform, receive hands-on design mentoring by experts in the field, submit designs to CASS-sponsored fabrication runs via the Efabless chipIgnite program and test your fabricated chip. 

Benefits

  1. Learn by experience on IC conception, functional specifications, design and verification of IC, silicon fabrication, and chip test/bring-up.
  2. Hands-on design experience using open-source Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools and Open PDKs.
  3. Enhance students' professional careers in this exciting and challenging field of turning system ideas into real electronic circuits.

How to Participate?

  1. Form a team of three to five members, undergraduate and graduate-level students (until 31 December 2024). At least three team members must be IEEE and CAS Society members in good standing at the time of proposal submission and renew their membership the following year. 
    1. Note: This program is complementary to the SSCS PICO program.
  2. Invite one faculty member to be a supervisor/mentor for your team. 
  3. Register for this program by submitting a proposal containing "design title", “team composition (students and supervisor/mentor)”, "description of the design idea", "block diagram" and "expected outcome". A design proposal template is given here. You may use these open-source silicon project 1, project 2, and many others as a reference. Submit your proposal here before the deadline.
  4. Attend design reviews scheduled once every two weeks through Zoom or Webex with CASS mentors. Our expert-in-the-field volunteers, including IC design professionals, professors, and advanced graduate students, will meet online to answer questions and interact with your design team.
    1. In this UNIC-CASS 2nd edition, depending on the complexity of the proposed design, selected projects will be mentored as either (i) advanced or (ii) educational.
  5. Travel (one representative from each team) to the CASS testing hub for the chip testing activities.

Proposal Submission Form

Important Dates

  • 19 June 2024 - First Call for Participation
  • 21 July 2024 - Deadline for Proposal submission (extended)
  • 31 July 2024 - Result announcement
  • 1 August – November 2024 Learn from specially curated educational materials, Design-to-Tapeout Mentoring sessions
  • November 2024 - Deadline for Layout submission 
  • April 2025 - Chip test/bring-up