THEALE, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The first 21 students on a unique programme to increase the number of IC designers worldwide have graduated successfully from the University of Nottingham’s Ningbo campus in China. The course is part of a multi-million dollar programme that Sondrel, one of the world’s leading system-to-silicon IC design consultancies, instigated and set up in partnership with Mentor Graphics and the University at the beginning of the year and is believed to be a world first in the semiconductor industry.

The students have all successfully completed three months of intensive training in the latest IC design methodologies and practices and will be able to utilise their expert knowledge working with many companies in China. Sondrel set up the course in conjunction with Nottingham University and Mentor Graphics to help address the severe shortage of qualified IC designers in the region. China’s IC industry is growing very rapidly and has an urgent requirement for these successful graduates who will also benefit the semiconductor industry worldwide. The successful graduates from the course have also been offered a four-month internship at one of Sondrel’s offices in China.

Graham Curren, CEO of Sondrel comments: “We are delighted to see the first intake of students successfully complete the programme. The course includes modules on Digital System Design, Verilog HDL & FPGA design, ARM 7 architectures, IP Integration and Validation, SystemVerilog for Validation and SystemVerilog for Assertion and is proving very popular. A physical design course also runs alongside these modules. The next intake of students will be in October this year.”

About Sondrel

Success through Partnership is the philosophy of Sondrel, one of the world’s leading system-to-silicon IC consultancies. Sondrel has the largest and most experienced consulting team in Europe and has completed over 200 designs at process geometries down to 20nm, including highly-complex digital, mixed signal, analogue, low power and wireless designs. Sondrel’s offices in the UK, USA, France, Italy, Israel, Sweden, Finland and China provide flexible services and methodology consulting to leading global semiconductor companies, enabling them to improve chip performance and reduce timescales and costs.