A VLSI laboratory and design courses are being developed for the electrical and computer engineering curriculum. These courses provide students with experience in the development of VLSI-chip products. In this setting, students form teams and undertake the whole design process: logic design, gate-level, layout-level, simulation/verification, test generation, and testing of the returned prototype chips. The proposed courses emphasize the importance of quality in the IC products, particularly testing. Students adopt the concept of concurrent engineering early in their studies of the design and testing techniques, and problems that arise in the manufacturing and mass production of the ICs are considered and solved. Design- for-test techniques are studied and their actual implementation, which makes the IC-chip products easy to test, are carried out by the design teams.The items requested comprise a benchtop ASIC tester and logic verification and test generation CAD software, which are essential for the implementation of Design-for-Test laboratory courses.
