We at Verilog Meetup constructed an exam/interview problem that has an interesting property: if a student tries to figure out a solution by thinking by himself, he usually succeeds; however if he dumps the problem on ChatGPT, the solution fails (does not pass the automated test), and the student goes into a death spiral of futility, kicking ChatGPT to get the solution right.
There is nothing weird about the problem, we do this in the industry all the time:
Armenia is a lucky country. Back in the 1990s somebody lobbied Synopsys, the #1 leader in the Electronic Design Automation market, to create a division there. It was joined by Mentor Graphics / Siemens EDA, another EDA leader, then NVidia. Synopsys Armenia became the largest Synopsys division outside the US Silicon Valley and Boston, although the Taiwanese may tell you otherwise. Since Synopsys and Mentor make software used by chip designers in Apple, Samsung, AMD and all other electronic companies, Armenia has an unfair advantage over all their neighbors in Caucasus and Central Asia.
In addition, Armenia has friendly relations with Russia, and most Armenians speak Russian as well. This has facilitated the move of many Russian companies to Armenia, for example, a RISC-V semiconductor IP provider Syntacore. Finally, as we can see from the recent conference EDA Connect, Armenia is attracting the attention of electronic and EDA companies from China.
EDA Connect featured not only academic and industrial papers but also a hackathon on FPGA design, attended by local students from Yerevan State University, the American University of Armenia, the Russian-Armenian University, the French University in Armenia and others.
Написал лонгрид на английском о текущем состоянии открытых средств проектирования ASIC-ов. Заодно познакомил англоязычных читателей с практиками шаманов Сибири и фигурой Ивана Сусанина. Упомянул планируемые семинары в Мексике и Армении.
A text on the current state of Open-source ASIC design tools. Includes side discussions of the upcoming hackathons in Mexico and Armenia, Docker and Python, Static Timing Analysis and RISC-V, Siberian shamans and treacherous swamps in Belarus.
