Reutlingen University Certified as Cadence Academic Network Lab

Let’s start with a confession: Reutlingen is not the most famous city in Germany, not even in the top 10. It’s a mid-sized town in the vicinity of Stuttgart, close to the Swabian Alps, and, according to the Guinness Book of Records, it has the narrowest street in the world (40 cm on average, 31 cm at the narrowest part). 

The Reutlingen University, with around 5.000 students, is not the biggest university in Germany, but according to statistics for favorable universities in Germany, it is in the top three. 

So, what makes Reutlingen and Reutlingen University so special? It is the industry and the relevance for the industry-related education. After the Second World War, Reutlingen became known as the millionaire city because the German automotive industry was growing, and many companies opened their factories in Reutlingen. Bosch was one of them. Top-notch industrial researchers had connections to universities and began teaching there as professors, ensuring highly relevant industry topics were in the classroom. Students were able to immediately start working in the industrial environment, and their ramp-up time was quick because of their training at university.  

The establishment of connections between industry and academia has carried through to today. On July 25th, the Electronics & Drives (E&D) faculty hosted an Industry Day on campus, with invited industrial partners from top German companies like Porsche, ZF, Bosch, and Zeiss. Former students who are now working in these companies presented the research topics they are working on; their topics mostly related to power electronics, which is becoming one of the hottest topics for the German automotive industry because of the electrification of modern vehicles. 

 

The Cadence Academic Network has a long-term relationship with the E&D department. 

The students from this faculty have won four Master Thesis Awards since the introduction of the award in 2017. Every other year, the best Master Thesis comes from Reutlingen.  

Professor Scheible, a former Bosch manager and co-author of “Fundamentals of Layout Design for Electronic Circuits,” is the Lead Institution professor for Analog Layout Design and Verification. He is constantly pushing his students to invent new ways to optimize analog design, like Expert Design Plan, where the circuit designer writes scripts and codes his knowledge, which can be reused by less experienced designers, or to use machine learning for transistor sizing or acceleration of analog simulation. At basically every CadenceLIVE Europe, Prof. Scheible presents these innovative solutions during the academic track, which is visited not only by academics but also by industry representatives. 

When Prof. Eckhard Hennig joined E&D a couple of years ago, he had a dream to create an environment for students to learn all the stages of chip design and to implement the theory into praxis. Every other semester, several student groups create real chips, which are taped out to conduct testing in a lab. The walls of the lab are filled with poster-sized layout screenshots of chips, which were successfully taped out. During the design process, the full Cadence flow was used by the students, teaching them how to use Cadence tools in just one semester. With such a thorough curriculum, every student can launch a successful career in the microelectronics industry right after finishing their studies. 

 

The same design designed, tested, and in action

The next step for the E&D faculty is to become a Cadence Academic Network Certified Lab. The certification acknowledges that the university and its educators are trained on the latest Cadence technology, ensuring cutting-edge and high-quality standards of teaching in the university lab. Cadence would like to congratulate Professor Scheible and Professor Hennig on this great accomplishment, and we look forward to continued collaboration in the future.  

Matthias Schweikardt receives Certified Lab Instructor certificates 

Do you want to play a valuable role in shaping the next generation of engineers and help them gain experience working with Cadence technology? Contact us, and we can share our experiences from other such partnerships!