SoC design skills: collaboration builds a stronger SoC design team

The success of new system-on-a-chip (SoC) initiatives depends on the availability of well-trained SoC designers who are able to bridge the gap between software centric system specification and hardware-software implementation in novel architectures. The Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse is working with its member Universities to facilitate the education of such designers-those capable of bridging all the key competence areas required to bring about this integration. We are cooperating in the creation of an MS Certificate program in SoC Design that will be collaboratively developed and jointly coordinated. This paper briefly describes our educational initiative, and the resulting collaboratively defined SoC Skill set.