What KGP EECS Alumni Do for AVLSI Lab IIT Kharagapur?

Meeting of KGP Alumni with Bijoy G. Chatterjee in Texas Instruments India

BijoyDa expressed his interest to meet a bunch of KGP graduates during his stay in Bangalore from 20^th to 22^nd September 2006 to Shailendra and me. I got very excited to about this and meeting BijoyDa. Shailendra started collecting email ids and contact numbers of EECS graduates from KGP. I helped him in adding my batchmates to this list. On the parallel side we were deciding about where venue, date and time of the meeting. Ayas was making us aware and cautious about possible problems in hosting such events. We took help from my supervisor S. Venkatratnam and manager Ram Anant to make sure that everything goes smoothly. With the support from Venky we wanted to play this game at next level and started calling as many graduates possible from inside and outside of TII. We got many confirmations but other silent and do not know yet kind of participants. On the day Venky arranged for conference room, security badges and dinner to everybody. Hetul and Atul escorted all the visitors to conference room. And I was very happy to see the conference room was not empty but it was looking full.

In the starting Venky briefed about the TI power management activities and collaboration with IIT Kharagpur in this area.

Then BijoyDa told great, inspiring story of his life. I created a possibility of doing something impossible. I got enrolled in the conversions that how he started computer society of India or Indian computer user group earlier started Tata Consultancy Services banking group, successfully running a system with 400,000 chips running simultaneously, building a team of 150 at TRW from scratch and many others. After working for 15 years continuously in US, he wanted to do something for India. He visited all IITs, IISc to be aware of ground reality and to know how he can help these universities. At this time he was in National Semiconductor working with several universities in this area.

After lots of research and efforts he picked up possibility of setting up advanced world class VLSI lab at IIT Kharagpur. His story of failure was a great learning and didn't stop him. He interviewed several professors at IIT and picked up the best among them to do work with him. After excellent results from Kharagpur he pursued IIT Foundation to fund $1m for this lab. He got leading industries in semiconductor area to help technically this lab. This is his great vision and he is very focused and committed for it.

Then he briefed about present status of VLSI lab at IIT Kharagpur and problems he is facing. His measurement is successful chips and papers in ISSSC to make VLSI lab equivalent to top graduate school lab.

He briefed about present areas to focus and responsible professors in that area.

Prof. Amit Patra is focusing on power management, Prof Pradip Mondal on Wired Communication, Prof. T. K. Bhattacharya on Analog RF Design, Prof. A. S. Dhar on Data converters, Prof. Pallabh Das Gupta andProf. S. Mukhopadhyay on Behavioral modeling.

He is looking for someone in Testing.

Hetul of Texas Instruments raised concerned about digital design and digital signal processing. There are good teams in Kharagpur under Prof. Dipandwita R Chowdhury, Prof. R V Rajakumar and Prof. Saswat Chakraborty for that but they need funded projects to support graduate students and research in these areas.

Then he expressed his concerns …

Why we are not playing up to a level of graduate school yet?

What are problems?

Is VLSI lab in IIT Kharagpur is useful at all?

Should VLSI lab be allowed to only graduate students and banned for B. Tech. students?

With a sip of Pepsi and heat from these questions everybody in the room started adding their comments, suggestions and a great discussion started on How and What we can do for Kharagpur.

Kharagpur students are in darkness in many areas, they are stuck doing their work and research so need more guidance. Everybody in the room took responsibility of mentoring a student in the lab working in same area of interest. It will help the mentors as well as students in their growth. The byproduct is that VLSI lab will get to a level where we want. Now we need to make a list of mentors willing to help and students in the lab working or willing to work in their area of interest.

Another problem in KGP is about communication. As communication is very important for engineers and it requires very good listening and understanding context of other person. A continuous support structure from mentor and sincere urge for growing and learning from the students is needed.

Other area of consideration was motivating or inspiring KGP students to do research and projects instead of doing more interesting fun and time pass in hostels. Design contests from semiconductor industries in India, rewards and incentives in projects, cutting edge ideas in projects and publishing papers to famous international conference and journals should be encouraged.

Whenever a KGP alumnus visits Kharagpur, he should visit his teachers, students working in his area and also present about his experiences in the industry. Some kind of the technical lecture or seminar may also be arranged.

A local chapter or group of alumni needs to be formed in Bangalore, which will regularly meet and discuss about progress of lab, students and his experiences. We are strong but if combined then we are much stronger.

This lab is very useful for IIT Kharagpur and to develop VLSI Design expertise in India. Industry, academics and we all should grow together.

Let the game begin.

Jitendra K. Agrawal