In VLSI design, what is VLSI Front end and what is VLSI Back end? What does a front end engineer do compared to a back end engineer in the VLSI design flow? Who has better opportunities in terms of career and earning potential? These are some common questions that every student or entry-level engineer encounters. Introduction: Let's try to understand this in detail. Following diagram illustrates a standard VLSI Design life cycle and the various stages involved in the design from specification to manufacturing. Specification: This is the first stage in the design process where we define the important parameters of the system that has to be designed into a specification. High-level Design : In this stage, various details of the design architecture are defined. In this stage, details about the different functional blocks and the interface communication protocols between them, etc. are defined. Low-level Design: This phase is also known as microarchitecture phase. In