[mattbillenstein]

I studied computer engineering (EE/CS) from 1996-2001. My senior year the college offered a minor in VLSI design, it was a 4 course series covering the very basics of semiconductor design and test and as one of the projects we actually paired up and designed a small chip, here's a photo of the finished die. Simple 2-layer metal 1 micron process - this is a serial multiplier for two sixteen-bit integers. https://vazor.com/drop/mulman.jpg

Most of the students in these classes were graduate students, so with our normal course load as seniors in engineering, this was a tremendous effort. For a four-credit class I would sometimes have to work 20+ hours a week just on one class.

But, it was a good stepping stone to get into the industry - my first job was at LSI Logic executing physical design, timing closure, etc for their customers. I learned a lot but eventually stepped away from it to focus on software and startups - I didn't want to die at that desk - the designs and teams were getting bigger and the design cycles longer. I did not relish the idea of working for 3 years on a single project.

I do look back on it fondly though as it was closer to what I consider 'real' engineering - we did a ton of verification work and if you screwed up, it might be a million in mask costs and 3 months of time to fix. We did screw up from time to time and the customer often had some fixes, so on a new design, there were expected to be a couple iterations of prototypes before you went to production. I think the last design I taped out was in the 110nm node - ancient by today's standards.