The two critical elements for a scalable VLSI training

Given the talent needs of the semiconductor industry today, we can not dismiss the importance of the job-readiness of VLSI education lightly. The significant gap today is mainly in technical skills, often called hard skills, the specific knowledge a person requires to perform tasks on the job.

This knowledge is currently provided to people entering the industry in a very haphazard manner. Traditional training institutes for post-college education do exist. But, the primary purpose of these institutes is to impart just enough superficial knowledge for these learners to crack interviews and become employable. So students still lack the necessary hard and specific skills to perform tasks on the job. Because of this, most semiconductor and EDA companies still have to conduct in-house training, typically a few weeks to months before new joiners start performing on real projects.

The second challenge is providing these necessary hard skills at scale. Unfortunately, none of the solutions today seem to provide the hard technical skills at scale.

To solve this challenge, there are two components to suggest :

a)???Flipped classroom model – In flipped classroom model, lecture material is presented digitally, and actual class time is dedicated to discussions, hands-on problem-solving, and coaching. Of course, care must be taken when using digital material. Students need to be motivated on the topic, and a social contract needs to be established at the beginning of the class. And during the course, the coaching and in-person elements must reinforce the back-and-forth between the online content and its absorption and application. In other words, I do not mean to imply that this approach is hands-off or easy to deploy; it takes expertise, dedication, and continuous improvement.

b)??Courses with hard skills - sufficient for the learner to?start contributing on industry projects in the first month of the job itself.