Hardware Hack Days is a two-day, hands-on workshop where high-school students and teachers team up with engineers to design and build real microchips.
This event is an opportunity to understand the digital world beyond Facebook and Google. At Hardware Hack Days, Matt Venn will show you how to build your own silicon chip using open-source tools and design kits. John Cohn and Hack Club connect you to printed circuit board (PCB) technology, from setting up cloud-driven design software, to creating a custom PCB design, and submitting it for fabrication.
Who Should Attend
- High-school students – want to know more about the field of semiconductors? This will be a great introduction.
- High-school teachers – learn the steps to design and tapeout a silicon chip to enhance your STEM curriculum
If you’re a high school student interested in designing and creating your own chip, sign up and tell your teacher about us. This entry-level workshop will take you from ‘interested’ to being a real chip designer.
Certificates will be given to participants after the completion of the in-person workshop and survey completion.
What to Prepare
Participants will need a laptop and a GitHub account:
- A laptop computer and a mouse are essential. An iPad without a mouse is not suitable.
- To learn how to create a GitHub account, please see these tutorials:
- Creating an account on GitHub: https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/start-your-journey/creating-an-account-on-github
- Introduction to GitHub Videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0lo9MOBetEFcp4SCWinBdpml9B2U25-f
Schedule and Content
Day 1: Build your own Printed Circuit Board (PCB)
Design your own printed circuit board (PCB) at this Hack Day, and get a grant of up to $140 from project OnBoard and Hack Club to have it manufactured! Students are designing and building projects like Lidar sensors for a robot and rasberry-pi picos with the knowledge and skills gained through OnBoard grants.
John Cohn and Theo Loke will lead you through the design process in just a few hours. Your PCB, populated with components after fabrication, will be shipped to you 1 week after submission by mail.
OnBoard Hack Day Agenda (October 18):
| Time | Activity |
| 9:30-10:00 | Check-in |
| 10:00-10:30 | Introduction |
| 10:30-11:00 | Easy EDA |
| 11:00-12:00 | Place and route |
| 12:00-13:00 | Lunch (provided); First Robotics demonstrations |
| 13:00-14:00 | Customize your design |
| 14:00-15:00 | Prepare for fabrication |
| 15:00-16:00 | The Awesome World Enabled by the Transistor |
Day 2: Build your own silicon chip!
Matt from Tiny Tapeout follows a real-world chip design flow from hardware description to fabrication. He covers the basics of semiconductors, CMOS circuits, and how to build and test a system on a chip. If designing a chip seems elusive, this is THE workshop that gets it done. Watch Matt Venn’s 3-minute youtube video explaining Tiny Tapeout.
Four weeks after the event, your designs are sent for fabrication (at no cost to you). You will be able to test your chip on your own laptop 8 months later.
Tiny Tapeout Hack Day with Matt Venn Agenda (October 19):
| Time | Task |
|---|---|
| 9:30-10:00 | Check-in |
| 10:00-10:30 | Introduction |
| 10:30-11:00 | How do transistors work? |
| 11:00-12:00 | Design a simple digital circuit |
| 12:00-13:00 | Lunch (provided); First Robotics demonstrations |
| 13:00-14:00 | Create a chip layout |
| 14:00-15:00 | Add your design to the chip |
Instructors
Day One
John Cohn is an IBM Fellow in the MIT-IBM Watson AI Research Group based in Cambridge, MA. John earned a BSEE MIT, and a Ph.D in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University He has authored more than 30 technical papers, contributed to four books and has more than 100 worldwide patents. In 2005 John was elected a Fellow of the IEEE.
John is active in education issues at a local, state and national level. He is so passionate about promoting STEM careers that he spent 59 days living and inventing in an abandoned steel mill as part of Discovery Channel’s technical survival show “The Colony”. John lives with his family in a restored 19th century schoolhouse in Jonesville Vermont and is eager to share his love of science and technology with anyone who will listen.
Find out more about John Cohn on LinkedIn or visit John’s website at http://johncohn.org.
Clay Nicholson is a student from Vermont, where he serves as captain of the RoboHawks (FTC) and Green Mountain Robotics (FRC). He is also an Engineer at Hack Club, running national maker programs, and founded his school’s CS Club to expand access to computing. Clay has represented Vermont as a STEM advocate to state and federal leaders, helping launch new robotics teams and events across the state.
He earned Vermont’s first Grand Award at the 2025 Regeneron ISEF and is a Dean’s List International Finalist in both FTC and FRC. He has also been recognized with the VT Congressional App Challenge, the Yale Science & Engineering Association Award, and as an MIT LLRISE Scholar. For fun, Clay competes in varsity Ultimate, mountain bike racing, and skiing.
Theo Loke is a Grade 12 student athlete at Canyon Crest Academy (CCA), San Diego, in the Engineering Pathways Program. He recently served as a teaching assistant for the OnBoard PCB workshop at CCA and remotely interned at Georgia Tech designing PCBs. Theo has published two articles in the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine. He plays competitive soccer and plans to pursue a degree in electrical engineering.
Alvin Loke is a Senior Principal Engineer at Intel Corporation, San Diego, working on analog design/technology co-optimization for nanoribbon CMOS. He received a BASc from UBC, and MS/PhD from Stanford. Alvin spent several years in CMOS process integration and has thereafter been involved in analog design and its enable me. He is an active IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society volunteer and advocates for pre-college outreach in electronics.
Day Two
Matt Venn is a science & technology communicator and electronic engineer. He has been a leader of the open-source silicon movement for the last 5 years and has sent 30 chips for manufacture.
Matt has helped over 600 people learn the tools on his Zero to ASIC course, and created the Tiny Tapeout shuttle service that has facilitated manufacture of over 1500 custom chip designs since 2022. Find more about Matt Venn on LinkedIn.
Accommodations & Accessibility Needs
For accommodations and accessibility needs please contact ECE Communications at communications@ece.utoronto.ca.