Cadence Academic Network Blogs

After we have shown how to get remote access to Cadence licenses and tools, the next step would be to take advantage of educational material provided by Cadence. These resources are intended to increase your knowledge about Cadence tools and design flows. The Cadence Academic Network and academic distributors like Europractice, for EMEA, and CMC Microsystems, for Canada, offer Cadence Online Training called internet Learning Series (iLS) for students and academic staff for free! There are courses for virtually all areas, starting from analog and digital front-end over back-end, PCB and package design and even courses about Tensilica processor IP. Each area contains several courses of different difficulty and duration. For an overview of the courses and a recommendation on course flow, please check out the Learning Maps. In order to be enrolled in the courses, Cadence University Program and CMC Microsystems customers can contact universityprogram@cadence.com, and Europractice customers should visit their iLS booking portal.

After accomplishing an iLS training you can showcase your knowledge by completing an online exam to earn a digital badge! Digital badges are now available for over 65 of the Online Training courses. The digital badge can be shared on your LinkedIn profile or across other social media platforms and proves the successful accomplishment of the exam, something your future employer likes to see! Learn more

If you’re are an instructor at a lab, it is possible to become a certified instructor, which will also certify the whole lab in a certain expertise area. Certified labs get additional promotion from the Cadence Academic Network and are visible to students as labs where they can learn the latest Cadence tools and design flows, taught by instructors who are familiar with the technology. In order to become certified, the instructor has to complete certain iLS courses. For more information, please reach out to universityprogram@cadence.com.

Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan is a recognized Certified Lab

Tons of information about Cadence tools is available on the Cadence Online Support portal. With your membership in the Academic Network, you can get access to all these resources. For Cadence University Program and CMC Microsystems customers, please write to universityprogram@cadence.com.  Europractice customers, please ask your university representative; if you don't know your representative, please write to MicroelectronicsCentre@stfc.ac.uk to find out. Once you have an Academic Online Support account, you can access videos, manuals, whitepapers and much more. And now you have the power of Cadence Online Support in your pocket! With the newly launched Cadence Support Mobile App, you can explore product manuals, read troubleshooting solutions, and even watch training videos right on your phone! Learn more about the app and download today (iPhone App Store, Google Play Store). 

After learning the functionality of the tools, it might be interesting to experiment with a real-life database, execute a complete design flow, and check certain product features. For this, Cadence offers Rapid Adoption Kits, which are archives with a design database, step-by-step manual and generic Process Design Kits. After unpacking the archive and setting some environment variables, it is easy to go through the design flow or try out different features from the manual. Rapid Adoption Kits and Generic Process Design Kits are both available on Cadence Online Support.

If you want to be informed about the latest trainings or general news relevant to academics who are using Cadence tools, please join our Cadence Academic Network LinkedIn groups; there is one main group, where we post news of general interest and several specialized groups, where we are posting news for a certain topic. Feel free to start a discussion in the group or post some exciting news about your research, we are encouraging you to socialize.

If you’ve had enough staring at the screen, then stare at a book! Many of the members of the Academic Network are also a part of the OrCAD Academic Program, which is available through a separate distribution channel. For those interested in OrCAD, read the new release of the Complete PCB Design Using OrCAD Capture and PCB Editor, issued with a description of the new OrCAD 17.2 version and other updates. Not released yet, but already highly recommended and available for pre-order, is the Electronic Experiences in a Virtual Lab book, written by Roberto Gastaldi and Giovanni Campardo, both industry veterans from Italy, who are using PSpice for teaching microelectronics. And if you’re more into digital, you might want to read Thomas Dillinger’s excellent book VLSI Design Methodology Development. Learn more about this book from Cadence’s own Paul McLellan: Book Review on Breakfast Bytes

There are plenty of exciting things you can do with Cadence tools at home, use this time to your advantage!