Sync & Innovate: Technical PM Applied

Hi, I'm Taylor, and my name is Jason. We're both part of the C2S2 Project Management subteam. In our last blog post, we discussed our initial project, which involved redesigning the sponsorship packet and newsletter for our sponsors and alumni. By updating the design and incorporating technical details about the subteams' achievements and goals, we provided a visually appealing and informative snapshot of C2S2's current initiatives. This revamped sponsorship packet proved important in facilitating a prompt response to a potential collaboration opportunity with Synopsys.

This semester, as all subteams forge ahead with new projects, the PM team has focused on enhancing external communications and keeping our documents up-to-date. An important update was adding an all-team photo taken after we received our merchandise at the semester's start. These photos have been utilized in various events and outreach materials, such as the Intel presentation and our sponsorship packet. Reflecting on feedback from last fall's pitch demo, we realized the importance of balancing both the people side and the technical work side when presenting ourselves to the outside. Throughout the semester, we frequently captured moments of collaboration and daily activities in the ELL, especially during chip testing, CNF training sessions, and social events. These images, showcasing our team in C2S2 shirts, strengthen our collective identity.

Additionally, we attended subteam meetings and design reviews to gather information about ongoing projects, which helped us provide a richer narrative in our updated newsletter. The newsletter now includes detailed accounts of past achievements and current objectives for the spring semester, while the sponsorship packet remains a concise summary designed to spark corporate interest.

On March 22nd, C2S2 hosted an event with AMD experts and several ECE alumni to discuss our progress and gain insights into industry practices. Mr. Kashem's lecture on design thinking, illustrated through the simple example of a ball pen, emphasized the importance of project management in defining outcomes, addressing team needs, planning events, and engaging with stakeholders-vital for many organizations' success. During the dinner, Taylor, Abigail, Adele, and I engaged Mr. Kashem in a discussion about AMD's project management practices. He mentioned that AMD has more specialized project groups and advised us to maintain a higher than current PM member ratio to facilitate design. He also recommended the use of Gantt charts and communication methods that have proven effective at AMD. His insights affirmed the value of our work and provided guidance on improving subteam communication and managing external events.

This spring, we also explored more visual and interactive methods to communicate our work and team to the broader Cornell community and beyond. Following the high interest shown by Cornell students and high schoolers in our fall community engagement event, we recognized the need for more accessible information. During the giving day, we collected concise updates from subteam leads and combined this with footage to create a video for C2S2, which was shared on Instagram and will soon be available on our website. We are also developing new content, including videos on CNF training and chip imaging, to enrich our online presence further.

As we interacted with various subteams to understand their technical projects, our Project Management team is evolving to embrace more technical aspects and has discovered a passion for projects like RF design. The RFIC project being pursued by C2S2 has been in the making since the beginning of the Winter break of the 2023-24 academic year. The thought process for this technical expansion of the team follows from the new tools developed for the SKY130 PDK and the previous projects that the analog team has pursued. In November 2023, Cadence and Skywater announced that they have collaborated with one another to release a Cadence-compatible version of the SKY130 PDK; this would allow us to add many of Cadence's tools and features for more advanced projects that C2S2 would like to pursue. This would include an expansion into RF systems, which would normally require advanced electromagnetic simulations that we currently do not have access to. In addition, most of our past analog projects have been in the realm of mixed-signal design; to diversify team members' learning experiences, we would also like to introduce and cultivate RF experience on the team. This semester, Taylor has been the main student working on setting up this project, which includes creating a system-level overview of what this RF module would look like and setting up the tools that would be used in designing the RF module at the transistor level (Cadence Virtuoso and EMX).

The goal is to design a 915MHz transmitter with a wake-up receiver. If we can finish the complete design, layout, and simulations for the project earlier than expected, we may also look into making the design more complex by adding an I/Q modulated receiver in addition to the wake-up receiver; however, this idea is still in progress and, thus, is subject to what we can achieve in a given amount of time. We plan to begin the transistor-level design of this project in the summer of 2024 with a tape-out deadline of the following academic year (i.e., May 2025).

It is important to make it clear that the analog team is not shifting from open-source tools to commercial tools; for this project, we are using Cadence tools specifically because designing an RF module is already quite difficult for a group of undergraduate students to succeed in; thus we do not want to make the project more difficult by using purely open-source tools which may risk the incompletion of the project. In particular, an accurate electromagnetic simulator, such as EMX, is needed to simulate our RFIC designs and account for the parasitics that will arise from our layout. Without this tool, the project's success would decrease significantly as there is no comparable open-source analogue. The mixed-signal portion of the project team will likely continue using open-source EDA tools for the foreseeable future.

Overall, our enhancements in external communications and the initiation of the RFIC project are some of the work and highlights of combining strategic engagement with technical innovation in project management. Thanks for reading; we look forward to a bright future for C2S2!