Tapeout Chip Bring-Up

Test integrated circuit chips designed in previous tapeout classes

Lectures: Berkeley Wireless Research Center, Friday 14:00-17:00

Announcement: This site is the Fall 2026 offering. Content is still being finalized.

Instructor Sophia Shao

ysshao(at)berkeley(dot)edu
Instructor Kristofer Pister

ksjp(at)berkeley(dot)edu
GSI Yufeng Chi

chiyufeng(at)berkeley(dot)edu

PhD student in EECS. Research on system design for humanoid robots. Bring-up student, Fall 2022.
GSI Nicolas Rakela

nicorakela(at)berkeley(dot)edu

5th-year EECS MS. Research on HW/SW AI codesign and GPUs. BearlyML/DSP '25 tapeout, Fall '25 digital bring-up.
GSI Marie-Anne Xu

marieanne.xu(at)berkeley(dot)edu

5th-year EECS MS. Research on FPGA simulation and emulation. SCuM-V '26 tapeout, Fall '25 digital bring-up.
GSI Danny Lam

dannylam(at)berkeley(dot)edu

5th-year EECS MS. Research on AMS and RF integrated circuits. SCuM-V '26 tapeout, Fall '25 SCuM-V bring-up.

Semester Calendar

Fall 2026 week-by-week schedule
Week	Date	Topic	Lab Assignments	Additional Notes
Week 1	Aug 28	Intro to Bringup, Sp26 Chips, and Chipyard Slides	Lab 1 Chipyard Released	Bare dies back
Week 2	Sep 4	Intro to PCB	Lab 2 PCB Released
Week 3	Sep 11	Guest Lecture: Ethan on bringup FPGAs	Lab 3 FPGA Released Lab 1 Chipyard Due
Week 4	Sep 18	Intro to Interfaces and Embedded Programming	Lab 4 Baremetal IDE Released Lab 2 PCB Due
Week 5	Sep 25	Team Presentation	Lab 3 FPGA Due	Packaged chips back
Week 6	Oct 2	Team Presentation	Lab 4 Baremetal IDE Due
Week 7	Oct 9	Team Presentation		Assembled chips back
Week 8	Oct 16	Team Presentation
Week 9	Oct 23	Team Presentation
Week 10	Oct 30	Apple Mid-term Presentation
Week 11	Nov 6	Team Presentation
Week 12	Nov 13	Team Presentation
Week 13	Nov 20	Team Presentation
Week 14	Nov 27	No Class (Administrative Holiday)
Week 15	Dec 4	Worksession
Week 16	Dec 11	RRR Week
Week 17	Dec 18	Apple Final Presentation

Not required, but useful if you have not taken these courses.