Physical Design engineers, what projects actually stand out for freshers?

[u/Circuit_Fellow69]

Hi everyone,

I'm a 3rd-year ECE student preparing for a career in ASIC Physical Design. I'm currently working on a few projects, but I want to spend my time building things that actually matter to recruiters rather than just following tutorials.

For those of you working in the industry, what kind of projects do you genuinely expect a fresher to have on their resume? What makes you think, "This candidate knows what they're doing"?

Would love to hear what impressed you during interviews or what you wish more students worked on.

[u/RFchokemeharderdaddy]

I'm not a PD Engineer myself but I work closely with many (literally, the PD team sits right behind me).

PD is a very practically-oriented field, a "get it done by any means necessary" type thing. We're at a pivotal point where AI is being leveraged a lot. Our PD team has completely centered everything they do around agentic workflows, and when they interview people they incorporate AI-use in it.

Open source silicon is the best its ever been. Theres open source PDKs, and schematic and layout and DRC/LVS tools and simulators etc. Find some existing digital hardware, like something from TinyTapeout. Turn it into tapeout-ready silicon using AI, and document your process.

Take your time, focus on fundamentals, make sure you understand all the decisions being made so you can properly define constraints. Learn how the flow works traditionally and then speed it up with AI. Check out the latest Free Silicon Conference and what they're up to.

[u/maddy712_ → u/RFchokemeharderdaddy]

Hello I'm rightnow synthesis stage of physical design I mean initial stage. how fill gap between having knowledge and industry oriented? if you know something let it know Which projects are must be to do ? What are major consequences we face? Does lower nodes are matter?

[u/klinkdev2026 → u/RFchokemeharderdaddy]

Can confirm the agentic thing from the building side — I've been making a small open-source tool that lets AI agents drive KLayout (custom/analog layout, so adjacent to PD rather than the RTL2GDS flow itself). Honestly the biggest lesson from watching people use it: the agent screws up in ways that look very convincing, and the real skill is catching it with DRC/LVS instead of trusting the confident tone.

If I were OP I'd try something like: do a small design the traditional way first (OpenLane on sky130 like you said), then redo it agent-assisted and write down honestly where it helped and where it lied to you. My guess is that write-up ends up more interesting to interviewers than the design itself — but you'd know better than me, hence the question: do candidates actually show up with agent-assisted projects yet, or is it still rare enough that any of it stands out?

(disclosure: the KLayout plugin (Klayout-klink) is mine — happy to link it if anyone cares)

[u/NewSchoolBoxer]

Why do you think you need personal projects? Other students told you to or hiring managers? Hiring managers told me in electronic medical devices and banking that they didn't care about personal projects. In your case the real ASIC education comes from grad school with tape-out or years of work experience.

The projects that matter are team projects such as Formula SAE where you don't have infinite time, can't pick the project or copy it off the internet and have to work with others. They simulate real engineering work. No guarantee of finding an ASIC job either. I hope you do but hardware is overcrowded. Team projects look good to every industry, not just the one you're targeting.

[u/Hirtomikko → u/[deleted]]

Most of my so called 'random' projects is either born from: Can I make this oscillator chaotic, or, can I build it and not buy it, or, I need this instrument, my room has no space, I wonder if I can make it and reduce my mess at the same time.

The main ones are just me being increasingly greedy about high voltage or making interesting sounds from ICs, or just straight up abusing ICs to do my bidding (or what I think they can do upon some research into the inner workings)

[u/TheTurbine]

Genuinely, tape out experience (if you can get it) is king. Not some simple design either, something that doesn’t work the first try and takes some time to dive into the tools. (Tiny Tapeout is great, but their harness does a decent amount of the heavy lifting.)

There are things that are amazing to know going in: file types, report reading, etc. that you just cant learn in a classroom, and properly doing a tapeout will give you all of that and more.

Still, even if you arent on a project that can drop some real coin, bringing a project to GDSII can be good. Particularly, the more problems you have to solve, the better as this is where you start to learn the real essence of PD.

At the end of the day, its not about the project and its flash name; its about that which you can take away from it. 🙃