MasterHands-On RTL design for Networking Systems

Most students are familiar with processors and general-purpose computing systems, largely because that’s what academic coursework tends to emphasize. But what often goes unnoticed is that the networking domain in chip-design, think switches, routers, PCIe connections, AI Networks,NICs etc. is massive! In fact, it makes up a larger share of the chip industry than any other subfield.

Not just the scale, it’s also rich with interesting challenges. Engineers who understand this space are always in demand and rarely find themselves short of career opportunities. Companies like Cisco, Juniper Networks, Ericsson, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Google, Meta and many more are looking for this skillset all the time.

This course is a curated problemset that brings together design patterns, challenges and thought processes often encountered in real-world networking hardware design. It does not go deep into any specific protocol or niche so most students will benefit from it and build a solid foundation of RTL design in general while gaining the chops to work on more complex protocols in the future.

These aren’t just textbook examples, they’re abstractions of real industry problems, distilled into engaging and meaningful exercises.