Hardware Design Group is a department of C-DAC, Thiruvananthapuram centre (C-DAC(T)) with expertise in the design and development of products and technology in the areas of Embedded Product designs, IP development; and product implementation using FPGA/ASIC Technology in the Industrial, Consumer Electronics, Metering and Automotive domains.

Thrust Areas

• IP development for SoC implementation
• ASIC design and FPGA implementations
• Microprocessor Design
• Analog and Mixed Signal IC design
• Embedded System development
• Product designs for Industrial, Consumer, Automotive and Bio-Medical Applications
• High speed PCB design
• Ergonomics, tooling and mechanical design
• Precision assembly and testing

Expertise

• Commendable record of transfer of know-how to industry
• Microprocessor & System IP Design Verification, Complex FPGA implementations, Million gate ASIC design in sub-micron and deep submicron technologies, Analog and Mixed Signal VLSI Design, Embedded System design and development, High Speed PCB Design, ergonomics, tooling and mechanical design
• Interface with major foundries

The Group has proficiency in design verification using industry standard verification methodologies such as UVM, Verilog, System Verilog and C based testbenches to support various RTL languages VHDL, Verilog and high level languages like Bluespec System Verilog.

The Group also has a wide portfolio of in-house developed UVM based Verification IPs which consist of reusable testbenches with data checkers like scoreboard and functional coverage assessment capabilities through coverage collectors or monitors. In depth knowledge and experience of IPs system and peripherals like USB, Ethernet 1G, Ethernet 10/100, SDHost, SATA II, PCIe, DMA Controller, SDRAM controller, QSPI UART, SPI, I2C, GPIO etc. and bus protocols like AXI, AHB, APB etc. has helped us build capability in thorough functional verification closure of microprocessor SoC designs in a time bound manner.

The Group consists of an experienced team to support pre-silicon validation of the ASIC designs using Complex FPGA boards by checking all the major use cases through in-house developed embedded firmware and benchmarks to analyze the performance of nascent designs prior to true deployment.

Through its past success in design, development and deployment of complex processor based SoC ASICs that are currently in mass production, the group has proven its competence in supporting all stages of ASIC design such as semiconductor foundry and IP vendor interfacing, system design, RTL design & verification, FPGA validation, hardware emulation, ASIC physical design, design tapeout and package design support.

Facilities

• ASIC Design Suite from Cadence and Mentor Graphics
• FPGA Implementation Suites (Xilinx)
• Cadence PCB Design Tools
• Embedded firmware development tools
• Workstations, Logic Analyzers, Oscilloscopes etc
• 3D Mechanical design software from Solidworks
• Pilot Plant facility for PCB assembly