Publicado em: 18/12/2023

IEEE CASS RS Industrial Talks 2023

IEEE CASS RS Industrial Talks 2023 - Industrial Talk: Rydev, an ASIC Design House, by Alfonso Chacón-Rodriguez

No dia 19/12 às 17h (Horário de Brasília) ocorrerá a palestra “Rydev, an ASIC Design House” com Alfonso Chacón-Rodriguez, Vice Presidente de Desenvolvimento de Negócios (Vice President Of Business Development) na Rydev – Costa Rica.

Para acessar a palestra, clique aqui.

YouTube Live @ IEEE CASS Rio Grande do Sul Chapter

Rydev, an ASIC Design House
Alfonso Chacón-Rodriguez, Rydev, Costa Rica

Abstract:
Rydev is a Latin American ASIC design house, that provides services in digital and analog IC design and verification. The company has been involved in several projects, including the design of two recently announced 100+ million cells ASICs from an HPC data-centers provider. At Rydev, we have noticed that many of our clients, wedded to a traditional design style, are reluctant to adopt well-tested software development methodologies, including version control, project management methods (such as Agile), and scripting with more powerful languages, such as Python. Even in the field of IC verification, there is resistance to implement such standard methodologies as the Universal Verification Methodology in a consistent manner. This seems due to an attachment to outdated tools and programming languages, and the product of a mentality oriented towards maintaining senior teams that are not kept up to date. Such teams are usually inefficient at attacking modern design problems, with hundreds of millions of cells and complex system integration. Rydev has found an interesting niche in offering advice and developing solid verification frameworks based on a strong UVM implementation, mostly because of the existing shortage of knowledgeable engineers in this area, increasingly critical given the exponential increase in the size and complexity of modern chips, and the prohibitive cost of a re-spin below 10 nm. We believe that this is a market opportunity to open a larger space for the Latin American industry in microelectronics, since a verification engineer is easily trainable if you have junior electronics, electrical and software engineers with strong programming skills, and basic knowledge of computer architecture and digital design, without the need for them to master the complexities of the full VLSI design flow.

Short CV:
Born in San José, Costa Rica, in 1967, Alfonso Chacón-Rodriguez holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (1990), and a Doctorate in Engineering from the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina (2009). He also holds a Magister Literarum in English Literature from the University of Costa Rica (2004). He has published several papers on digital acoustic signal processing, and has served as reviewer for several IEEE conferences and journals such as the IEEE Sensors Journal, the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, and Springer’s Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing. He shared the 2011 National Literature Award in his country for his novel El luto de la libélula. His interests range from low power analog and digital VLSI, low power signal processing and digital systems architecture, to philosophy and literature. He’s co-founder and VP of Business Development at Rydev, since 2021.