Author: Raju Gorla

The five stages of a VLSI career and what I would focus on at each one, from college to principal engineer or manager.

The difference between design verification, pre-silicon validation and post-silicon validation: when each happens, the tools, and the skills.

What FPGA prototyping is, why chip teams use it, what changes in the design, and how it compares with simulation and emulation.

ASIC vs FPGA compared on cost, performance, power and flexibility, with clear advice on when to choose each one.

The key turning points in VLSI history, from the transistor and the first ICs to microprocessors, EDA, foundries and today’s chiplets.

The VLSI trends changing real engineering work: AI hardware, chiplets, gate-all-around transistors, backside power, RISC-V and semiconductors in India.

How AI is changing chip design tools, what LLM assistants can and cannot do, why AI hardware is booming, and what it means for your career.

The computer architecture topics VLSI interviewers ask about: pipelines, hazards, caches, branch prediction, and how to prepare.

Why every VLSI engineer needs scripting, which languages to learn (Python, Tcl, shell), with examples and practice ideas.

VLSI project ideas by level, from a UART to a pipelined RISC-V core, and what makes a project impress an interviewer.