We make tools for chips
Electronic
Integrated electronic systems, so-called „chips“, are key components in virtually any application area. Washing machine, PC, car, pacemaker, computer tomograph, power plant, heat control – modern complex technical systems that facilitate and save our living while saving energy and other resources and cost are unimaginable without chips. Chips consist of billions of devices and combine versatile functions, which had to be realized in cubicles of electronic equipment in the past, on the same area as a thumbnail.
Design
The design of integrated systems – and therefore the automation of this design – is a core concern of engineering. Because of the extraordinary potential to save resources, energy and cost more and more functionality goes into chips in CMOS and subsidiary technologies. Chip design and its automation become an interdisciplinary task in this way, taking up physics, chemistry, biology, medical science, mechanical and computer engineering, mathematics.
Automation
Design of a chip with billions of devices starting from a system specification over the structural interconnection on gate level down to the placement and routing is comparable to urban planning including supply and disposal and has to be done in a few months. Chip design therefore is impossible without computer-aided design methods! We research and teach methods and tools that support the designer in industry with computer aids in his daily circuit and system design tasks. As a student you can join us in that process!
Sponsors and partners from industry and public institutions
accompany our work, e.g., Bosch, Dialog Semiconductor, IBM, Infineon, Intel, MunEDA, Texas Instruments, DFG, BMBF.
