Integrated circuits design teaching using professional CAD environments

A great demand for qualified integrated circuit (IC) designers has been observed around the world due to the increasing market of semiconductors, wireless communication and Internet. As a result, engineering schools are obligated to ensure the education of a greater number of new designers. To aid this goal, professional computer-aided design (CAD) for microelectronics is preferred rather than using academic CAD tools developed at universities. However, these tools are somewhat complex to learn and not suitable to IC designer training. In this work the Mentor Graphics environment has been adapted to IC design teaching.