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The IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS) invites you to participate in the 3rd edition of Universalization of IC Design from CASS (UNIC-CASS)

The proposal submission deadline has been extended to 14 Sept 2025.
10 months ago
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IC Design

The IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS) invites you to participate in the third 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 of 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 complementary locations. 

There are no restrictions on 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 IHP MPW 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 3 to 5 members, undergraduate and graduate-level students (until 31 December 2026). At least 3 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 with 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.

    1. In this UNIC-CASS 3rd edition, the team MUST submit proof of a successful simple design example together with the proposal. Detailed instructions can be found here.

  4. Attend design review mentoring sessions 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.

Important Dates

  • 4 Aug 2025 - First Call for Participation

  • 14 Sept 2025 - Extended Deadline for Proposal submission

  • 20 Oct 2025 - Result announcement

  • 6 Oct – March 2026 Learn from specially curated educational materials, Design-to-Tapeout Mentoring sessions

  • March 2026 - Deadline for Layout submission

  • Sept 2026 - Chip test/bring-up

 

Learn More Here