How Software Can "Chip In" to the IC Design Process: A Multidisciplinary Approach May Attract New Talent and Accelerate Innovation

In the face of declining electrical engineering enrollments and exploding computer science popularity, development tools and techniques from the software community, such as agile and open source flows, can breathe new life into chip design. With the pace of Moore's law slowing, there is a looming question of how chip designers can prepare for what is on the horizon. The manifestation of Moore's law over the course of many decades has resulted in billions of transistors per chip to architect, floorplan, and verify, but many of the fundamental digital building blocks have not recently changed.