One of these design exercises that our second years encounter is the chip design project. This project is about designing an integrated circuit (IC) to implement some particular functionality that is given to you. The chip will contain 16 different smaller squares, and each of those squares contains one of the designs from a group of 4 or 5 students working together. Students use all of the industry standard CAD tools that we have available on the machines to design their circuit; to simulate it to make sure that it works correctly, and to lay it out actually on the chip.