Educating future chip designers

The evolution of analog and digital integrated circuits from small elements to complex systems is clearly documented in the past issues of the DIGEST. Improvements in technology and CAD, raise some vital questions about the areas that future chip designers need to understand and the venue for this training. The answers depend strongly on the techniques and tools available for the chip designer: whether CAD will provide powerful compilers, freeing the designer to focus on system issues, or whether the demands of performance tuning debugging and normal design will force the designer to understand circuits. To discuss these issues, panelists will review opinions on the relative importance of the spectrum from device physics to system architecture.