Teaching Introductory Course in VLSI for Graduate Level Program Ali El Kateeb and Adnan Shaout Electrical and Computer Engineering Department University of Michigan – Dearborn USA 1. Abstract This paper describe the first VLSI graduate course details for students studying in the field of computer engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, and information technology. An overview of how VLSI course is taught in universities world wide has been covered in this paper. The curriculum of the introductory course in VLSI in different parts of the world has been investigated in this paper. However, we focused on the teaching of the “introduction to VLSI design” course at our academic institution - University of Michigan at Dearborn. The paper also focuses on the CAD tools used by universities to enhance the proclivity of the students towards the course. 2. Introduction VLSI an acronym for Very Large Scale Integration was proposed by Mead Carver in the year 1969. Within a matter of ten years Mead Carver had made VLSI circuits a success. The versatility of the technology captured the attention of potential hardware manufacturers which resulted in a need for more engineers with the knowledge of VLSI. This demand led to the introduction of VLSI as a regular course in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department in universities through out the world. The curriculum proposed by Mead and Conway was welcomed by universities through out the United States. The guidebook by Lyn Conway “A guidebook for the instructor of VLSI design system design” presents a brief outline of how the course is to be conducted in universities offering VLSI. The book specifies the abstract of the course, Goals of the course, the projects to be carried out and design tools and procedure required to carry out the project [1]. Many resources are available to those faculties teaching the graduate level courses in VLSI. There are many good books available in this area where the instructors can select one or more text books for this course [2-8]. In addition, there are many faculties put their course materials on the Internet and they are available to every one to view and learn about how this topic is being taught at different universities [9-15]. More material is available on journals where the experience of some researchers and instructors in teaching VLSI courses are highlighted [16- 17].