Cadence Academic Network Blogs

The Taiwan National IC Design was a great opportunity for Cadence and the Academic Network to build our brand with students, connect with academia and attract top talent in Taiwan. This was the fourth year that we sponsored the competition. In addition to the sponsorship, Cadence provided EDA tools, Cadence CIC tools online training bootcamp, tailored PDKs and online training courses to the participating students. Cadence Taiwan AE Director Scott Li also gave a talk on "A New Era of Analog/Mixed-Signal IC Design in Intelligent Systems" during the online award ceremony.

The 2021 competition had the largest number of students participating in the competition. The competition had 33 universities, 794 teams, and 1256 undergraduate and graduate students competing from February to May 2021. There were 166 teams, and 321 students that made it to the finals, which were held May 4-6, 2021 in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The competition gave the teams five categories to address: 

• Graduate-Level Full-Custom Design Category
• Graduate-Level Cell-Based Digital Circuit Category
• Analog Circuit Design Category
• Undergraduate-Level Full-Custom Design Category
• Undergraduate-Level Cell-Based Digital Circuit Design Category

Each group had their design results evaluated based on performance, area, power and completion. In the end, there were multiple awards given out to the top 5% of participating teams demonstrating that the competition was very competitive and not easy to win.

Cadence and the Academic Network look forward to many more years of supporting the Taiwan National IC Design Contest.