What electives to take? (IC design related)

[harelo]

What electives to take? (IC design related)

Hello everyone, I'm entering my 4th year in Biomedical and Electrical engineering, where I have a few electives to do, however I am somewhat puzzled as to the options.

From all my studies I've found that I really enjoy IC circuit design (digital, not really into RF).

However here is where the problem arises. I very much enjoy both the Device side (layout, transistor composition, all that microscopically awesome stuff) but I'm also very much interested on having the be able to actually design the circuit (transistor logic, VLSI, etc).

I am interested in the near future to work with IC design for medical applications and the like, but now I'm wondering what would give me the better opportunity? If anyone is in the field, what do you find has a better chance?

The IC Design class at my university is very hands on, where we design the circuit layout and actually get to send it to the Fab, and afterward we receive it back and do lots of testing and redesigning, so I feel it would be really good for future reference.

Thanks to anyone who can help me out, any feedback would be welcome :)

 

[berkeman]

Hello everyone, I'm entering my 4th year in Biomedical and Electrical engineering, where I have a few electives to do, however I am somewhat puzzled as to the options.

From all my studies I've found that I really enjoy IC circuit design (digital, not really into RF).

However here is where the problem arises. I very much enjoy both the Device side (layout, transistor composition, all that microscopically awesome stuff) but I'm also very much interested on having the be able to actually design the circuit (transistor logic, VLSI, etc).

I am interested in the near future to work with IC design for medical applications and the like, but now I'm wondering what would give me the better opportunity? If anyone is in the field, what do you find has a better chance?

The IC Design class at my university is very hands on, where we design the circuit layout and actually get to send it to the Fab, and afterward we receive it back and do lots of testing and redesigning, so I feel it would be really good for future reference.

Thanks to anyone who can help me out, any feedback would be welcome :)

If I understand your question correctly, I would recommend focusing on the circuit design, and not the transistor device design.

You will have plenty of Intellectual Property (IP) available to you from the IC fab houses and their IP vendors, so you will not have to design the transistors or the building blocks from scratch. Instead, your real contribution will generally come from how you use those tools to build digital or mixed signal ASICs for cost-effective and growing markets.

 

[Reshma]

Hello everyone, I'm entering my 4th year in Biomedical and Electrical engineering, where I have a few electives to do, however I am somewhat puzzled as to the options.

From all my studies I've found that I really enjoy IC circuit design (digital, not really into RF).

However here is where the problem arises. I very much enjoy both the Device side (layout, transistor composition, all that microscopically awesome stuff) but I'm also very much interested on having the be able to actually design the circuit (transistor logic, VLSI, etc).

I am interested in the near future to work with IC design for medical applications and the like, but now I'm wondering what would give me the better opportunity? If anyone is in the field, what do you find has a better chance?

The IC Design class at my university is very hands on, where we design the circuit layout and actually get to send it to the Fab, and afterward we receive it back and do lots of testing and redesigning, so I feel it would be really good for future reference.

Thanks to anyone who can help me out, any feedback would be welcome :)

I am currently in a closely related area of Biomedical Engineering. Depending on your university, usually there are many overlapping courses in EE and Biomedical Engineering, like Digital and Analog signal processing and VLSI design. If you are more interested in medical instrumentation, you can take a course on medical sensors and instrumentation. I would strongly recommend learning a programming software like LabView (http://www.ni.com/labview/) and electronic circuits simulation softwares like Proteus (http://www.labcenter.com/index.cfm).