Veda in R&D pact with Sun, Cadence

To build 'Centre for Competency' for research in VLSI

Veda Institute of Information Technology Private Limited, in association with Sun Microsystems Inc and Cadence Design Systems, has decided to build a 'Centre for Competency' for research and development in VLSI (very large scale integration) engineering.

Addressing a press conference, Dasaradha R Gude, chairman of Veda Institute of Information Technology Private Limited, said, "The centre with its supporting partners aims to arm students with up-to-date academic skills and provide hands on experience on all VLSI design and engineering functions including test to scale top level VLSI engineering challenges."

The centre will be based on Sun's grid infrastructure and electronic design automation (EDA) tools. "Industry and business partners in the country can use and evaluate grid distributed management and portal technologies through a series of projects," he said. The centre will also provide Sun with reference architecture in the area of VLSI engineering.

Sun will provide grid computing, open, scaleable and commercially viable grid and high performance computing (HPC) solutions for the advancement of training and research in VLSI technology and Cadence will grant access to their tools for instruction and academic research.

"There is a remarkable growth in the semiconductor business globally leading to an increase in demand for talented engineers in this sector and the institute is keen to tap this opportunity and that is why this centre is being set up," he said.

Gude said that the centre would offer a two-year master's programme, a four-month diploma course and courses that would range from seven to 10 days depending on the need of the students. "The courses would start from the first week of January and the fees for the masters programme is Rs 60,000 per semester and Rs 40,000 for the diploma course," he said.

Y Venkatrami Reddy, vice-chancellor of the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU), said that initiatives involving a tie-up between universities and the industry are the need of the hour. He said that JNTU was planning to launch two to three post-graduate programmes from the next academic year basing on this model. "We are in talks with Infotech Enterprises Limited and another company for launching M Tech programmes," he said.