The e-course is the third part of the series “The way the creators of smart nanochips work”. This series introduces students to the basic ideas on which modern digital electronics is built and talks about the work of teams of engineers in high-tech industries that are engaged in the design of nanometer microcircuits. Authors’ profile: Yuri Panchul, Senior Engineer in design and verification of integrated circuits, Wave Computing Company (USA); Vitaly Kravchenko, Director General, Univeda Company (Russian Federation).

Every smartphone, car, and spaceship have  microchips that control their behavior.

These microcircuits execute programs, exchange information with each other, take readings from sensors and display information for a human- user. Recently, more and more chips with specialized units for recognizing images and other data using hardware accelerators for neural networks have been released.

Each microcircuit is a result of the labor of thousands of people who own dozens of specialized professions.

The e-course   “The Physical Side of Digital Circuitry” talks about the work of physical design engineers who determine how logical components should be placed on the site of the chip.

Before taking this e- course  it is recommended to take the first e-course of the series “From   Transistor to Microcircuit”, in which the objects that the electronic engineer works with: electrical signals, logic elements and memory cells, and the second course, “The logical side of digital circuitry” which  smears about  the work engineers who design the logics  of digital hardware units.

For students   taking this e-course  it is desirable (but not necessary)  to  be familiar with “boolean algebra”, “binary numbers”  and “ transistor operations” (in the series the  brief explanations are given on these topics) and to  understand the concepts of the “algorithm”  and be able to program in any language.