Opportunities for Electronics Engineers - Presentation given to a batch of final year BE Students from Electronics and Communication Engineers to make them aware of Semiconductor, VLSI Industry and Embedded Systems.

1. OPPORTUNITIES FOR ELECTRONICS
ENGINEERING STUDENTS
-INDUSTRY TRENDS AND CAREER
RAMDAS M
-EXPERIENCED VLSI ENGINEER
-ONLINE TEACHER, AUTHOR, BLOGGER
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2. INTRODUCTION
• Experienced VLSI Engineer
• 18+ years of experience in VLSI industry
• Experience - AMD, Intel, C-DOT and startups
• Expertise in microprocessors design and
verification
• Courses/Blogs
www.verificationexcellence.in
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3. FOCUSED STREAMS
• BE/BTECH - ECE
• ME/MTECH –VLSI, Microelectronics
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4. CHOICES
• Semiconductor/VLSI Industry
• Embedded Software Development
• Electronics Equipment Manufacturing Industries
• System Design – PCB design
• Research and Development
• PSU
• Teaching
• Other – Non-core job opportunities - Software etc
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5. SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY - TRENDS
• Design and Manufacturing of Semiconductor devices
• Formed around 1960 and estimated at $412 billion (as of 2017 per
Wikipedia)
• Extensively used in Electronic devices and Continuous innovation and Growth
• Consumer Electronics - Smart phones , TVs , PCs, Communication devices
• Aerospace and military systems, Medical and Healthcare devices
• Computing - PCs, Cloud Computing, HPC (Super computers)
• AI, ML – Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning
• IOT (Internet of Things) - More and more devices connected to Internet
• Home and industry automation, wearable devices
• Autonomous Vehicles 7/27/2018
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6. VLSI – VERY LARGE SCALE INTEGRATION
• “Moore’s law is dead - long live Moore’s law”
• Technology Nodes
• Past - 65nm -> 40nm -> 22nm
• Now - 16nm -> 14nm -> 10nm -> 7nm
• Future - 5nm -> 3nm
• Emerging Trends
• Monolithic vs Heterogeneous chip designs
• 3D Stacking of transistors, Memories
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7. COMPLEX CHIPS - NVIDIA VOLTA GPU
Source: AnandTech
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8. COMPLEX CHIPS – INTEL CPUS
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9. COMPLEX CHIPS - AMD RYZEN
• Ryzen 7 – 4.8 Billion Transistors
• 14nm, 195mm2
Source: AnandTech
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10. COMPLEX CHIPS - QUALCOMM
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Source: AnandTechWWW.VERIFICATIONEXCELLENCE.IN
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11. BROAD SPECTRUM OF VLSI - OPPORTUNITIES
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12. SEMICONDUCTOR/VLSI - OPPORTUNITIES
• Large Product Companies - Designs and develops ASICs, SOC, Microprocessors
• Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD, Samsung, MediaTek, Broadcom, TI, ST
• Service Companies –
• Outsourced/In-house development for major product companies
• Wipro, TCS, Tata Elxsi, Mirafra, Waferspace, Sasken, Mindtree and many more
• EDA (Electronic Design Automation) Companies
• Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Aldec
• IP Design Companies
• ARM, MIPS (Processor core), Synopsys, Cadence etc (Memories, Protocol agents, connectivity)
• Fabrication (Fab) Companies - Manufactures chip
• TSMC, Global Foundries, Samsung
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13. SEMICONDUCTOR/VLSI - INDIA
• Most number of opportunities after US
• Almost all major MNC has development office in India (Bangalore)
• Growing number of startups, service companies
• Jobs across broad spectrum of VLSI Design
• Architecture, design, implementation, testing
• Microprocessors to communication chips, Digital, Analog mixed signal chips etc
• Employability of fresh graduates still concern
• Academia vs Industry expectation
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14. VLSI ENGINEERS - SKILLS
• Fundamentals of Digital Logic Design
• Microarchitecture, State machines, Clocks, Combinational & Sequential Logic
• Fundamentals of Analog Circuit Design
• PLLS, ADC/DAC, High speed signaling, Signal integrity issues (cross talk, jitter etc)
• Design Methodologies and Flows
• RTL design, Physical design, STA (Static Timing Analysis)
• Hardware Description Languages
• Verilog/SystemVerilog, VHDL
• Transistors and Process Technologies – CMOS, FINFET,
• Programming and scripting languages - C , Perl, Python
• Domain Knowledge – CPUs, Wireless, Communication, DSP etc.. 7/27/2018
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15. EMBEDDED SYSTEMS
• Typically a computer system (micro controller or DSP) embedded part of a system.
• Dedicated function instead of general purpose (microprocessor)
• Includes Hardware, Software and Mechanical parts
• Real time computing, low power consumption
• Used in Home appliances, Medical electronics, Automotive and Industrial systems
• Intelligent temperature control inside an A/C, Smart TV, Digital Set Top Box
• Traffic lights, Factory controls, Portable Audio/Video devices,
• Medical devices – Scanners, Various Vital monitors
• Automotive entertainment, Self driving Vehicles
• IoT Devices – wearables, digital watches
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16. EMBEDDED SYSTEMS - SKILLS
• Good knowledge in theory and practical's on micro controllers (PIC, 8051)
• Programming in C , Embedded C, Assembly language
• Knowledge of various peripherals – UART, Timers, ADC/DAC , SPI, I2C
• Understanding of Memory regions (heap, stack etc), Interrupts, DMA
• Driver Software development – Understanding devices, registers and
programming
• Understanding of Operating systems, Real Time OS - Coding using inter
process communication, semaphores, mutex
• Debugging skills – Basic Electronics Debugs and Troubleshooting
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17. EMBEDDED SYSTEMS - OPPORTUNITIES
• Embedded System Software Engineers
• Automotive Companies
• Industrial Automation, Medical Electronics companies
• Aerospace companies
• Almost all product companies
• Intel, Qualcomm, TI , Nvidia
• ARM, Broadcom, Bosch
• Harman, Volvo, Boeing,
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18. OPPORTUNITIES - OTHERS
• PSU Companies (Public Sector)
• C-DOT, DRDO, ISRO
• BEL, BEML, HAL,
• BSNL, RailTel, BARC
• PCB Design, Assembly and Testing – Mostly System design companies
• Research and Development
• Teaching
• General Software development.
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19. INCREASING YOUR EMPLOYABILITY
• Good Grades/CGPA still important
• Internship, Mini projects, Conferences and Paper Presentations
• Additional Courses to supplement with industry oriented skills
• HDL (Verilog, System Verilog), Physical Design
• Online courses – You tube, Coursera, Udemy, NPTEL
• Participation in Discussion/Q&A Forums
• StackExchange, LinkedIn, Quora
• Keeping up to date on latest trends/technology
• Reading Articles, papers, blogs
• Attitude to continuously improve
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20. THANK YOU
• Follow www.verificationexcellence.in
• Follow @Quora - https://www.quora.com/profile/Ramdas-Mozhikunnath
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