VLSI Design WorkBook

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Giving adequate getting started training is always a time consuming stuff for any experienced designers. The VLSI Design WorkBook is intended to serve as a relatively stand-alone and in-depth learning tool for newcomers and beginners. It is a combination of knowledge gained by users' experience, tools official documentation and Web tutorials from other research institutes and universities.
The main goal of the WorkBook is to give background information and examples on accessing INFN computing resources and using the large collection of electronics design automation (EDA) softwares licensed by INFN for the VLSI and Electronics laboratories. These tools are generally very complex and setting them up and utilizing them effectively can be less-than-intuitive without adequate information and documentation. Too often time is just wasted reinventing the wheel!

The WorkBook would cover full-custom Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) design, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) programming and Printed Circuit Board (PCB) design. It is in form of exhaustive step-by-step tutorials, HowTo's and FAQs, aware that beginners may fear seeking help from other experienced designers or professional researchers. References to papers, books and to other Web resources integrate the WorkBook documentation. Rerefences to advanced topics might help the more experienced users as well. Bear in mind that much of the documentation that can be found browsing the Web is in form of tutorials rather than detailed manuals, which are generally neither in-depth nor up-to-date with the latest software releases.

A list of Web tutorials and documentation published by other research institutes and universities around the world has been collected in Third party tutorials pages.
A large collection of links to lectures and webcasts can be found in Lectures pages instead.

Please, consider to spend some time in contributing to the WorkBook pages or provide feedback on issues, difficulties, typos, grammatical errors etc. as you work through the tutorials. Your effort will certainly save someone else time !