Story of Metavlsi

I have been a semiconductor engineer for the last 20 years; I graduated from IIT Delhi. In the last 20 years, I have been fortunate enough to work in companies like ST Microelectronics, Fishtail Design Automation (now part of Synopsys), and Real Intent. Around 2018, I decided to return to India because I always felt the VLSI education system in India needed much improvement, and I wanted to contribute to that. It was with that vision that I started vlsideepdive. Vlsideepdive is an online learning platform like Udemy dedicated to VLSI and semiconductors. I ran the vlsideepdive platform, and it continues to run.

I realized three kinds of users came to the vlsideepdive platform. The first category of users were typically from Tier 1 colleges or cities and were able to make the best use of the platform. They ended up achieving an excellent career outcome. Over the last two years, we helped grow around 3000 students and working professionals. There was a second set of users who would struggle with the content; they would benefit from the platform but won't succeed as much as the first category of people. It wasn't that people weren't hardworking; it's just that when there was no mentor to guide them on an online platform, they felt a little lost. The third category of students were from more humble backgrounds, cities or colleges. They would do good on the platform but find it hard to get noticed by employers because of multiple biases in our hiring systems today.

When I returned to India, I set my goal to impact VLSI and Semiconductor education at a scale, especially in Tier 2 cities and colleges. India has a lot of youthful and motivated talent not necessarily restricted to Tier 1 cities and colleges; Vlsideepdive was helping but was not achieving at the level I wanted it to. So, I returned to the drawing board; I talked to friends and seniors from companies like Intel, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Synopsys, and AMD. I figured out what worked in these companies and whether that could be replicated outside. I gathered that all these companies had the following vital ingredients that made a fresher out of college succeed:

1. Unlimited access to infrastructure and computing resources
2. Unlimited access to the best commercial EDA tools
3. A well-designed talent development program with hands-on labs
4. Assigned working professionals as mentors for technical and non-technical guidance.
5. A transition/shadow project which helps in migration from training to industry work.

Analyzing all this, I realized I could help these students and working professionals in the 2nd and 3rd categories by replicating this environment.?This was the genesis of Metavlsi.?

Thankfully, Semiconductor Fabless Accelerator Lab (SFAL) agreed to help us with our vision, taking care of points 1 and 2 above. With my experience of vlsideepdive, I had already created the content needed for the 3 above; we worked with Sfal to get our content and labs vetted by the industry. I contacted my friends and colleagues in the industry to help with the 4 above, and almost everyone gladly agreed to help, even with their hectic schedules. We are just getting started on the 5 above with our consulting arm so our students can get a taste of real-world semiconductor work.

?I understand it will be a lot of hard work. Still, India's time in the semiconductors is now, for the first time, we have government, multinational companies, industry bodies ( Semiconductor Fabless Accelerator Lab (SFAL) , India Electronics and Semiconductor Association ), and geo-political situations lined in our favour.?Metavlsi is dedicated to making 100K semiconductor engineers in India who are the best in the world.?The stars are aligned, and we must put our heads down and work.