Ana Maria Sa'ez and Valeria Villagrán
Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
University of Chile

Thanks to an agreement with Synopsys, the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Chile has made available to its students the most modern university laboratory for integrated circuit design.

The reactions from the students that have already used the Synopsys tools have been, “We couldn’t imagine that this was possible in Chile.”

The set of tools, with a commercial value over $100,000, allows students to simulate circuits, generate electronic functions, modify them, add graphical interfaces, and chose the appropriate technology to build the circuits. Professor Nicolas Beltran, responsible for the new laboratory stated, “It represents a modern way of teaching electronics and great opportunities in this domain.”

This set of tools will be used by the researchers to generate a greater specialization in electronics; forming professionals that can not only analyze an already fabricated circuit but can also deliver local solutions for different domains. “It means that from this Department we will be able to banish the sentence ‘it is better, cheaper and faster from other countries.’ Making the right decisions will produce big changes in the mid-term in the domain of electronic systems development,” stated Professor Beltran.

The Electrical Engineering Department is in a privileged position because of these tools. “We are ahead of what the majority of the country and the region are doing in electronics. According to Synopsys representatives there are very few universities in the region with access to these tools and the Electrical Engineering Department could consolidate a specialization in electronics,” stated Professor Beltran.

Nicolas Beltran has explained that as a complement of the tools, the Electrical Engineering Department is expecting a new set of tools to work with FPGAs.

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