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This is like asking, "How do I get into the medical industry?" It's overly broad. There are lots of different jobs in the chip industry. 1. Device engineer -
by phlipski 6y ago
This is like asking, "How do I get into the medical industry?" It's overly broad. There are lots of different jobs in the chip industry.
1. Device engineer - want to build transistors? Grab a physics/chemistry masters and /or PHD. Go to work at a foundry house like TSMC, Samsung, Intel, SMIC or Global Foundries.
2. Analog circuit design - grab a masters in EE (w/ circuit design specialty).
3. Layout - the person who translates the analog circuit design into the physical drawing that ultimately gets turned into a photolithography maskset. You can get an associates degree (maybe not even that much) at a local community college - learn the cadence/mentor EDA tools.
4. Verification - learn verilog HDL and computer architecture. A bachelors degree at a good Electrical Engineering program will get your foot in the door.
5. CPU design/architects - masters/phd in computer architectures.
6. Software - lots of different jobs here. Firmware guys write low level boot-rom code. Some guys focus on linux drivers and kernel porting to company xyz's latest chip. Some software guys focus on specific IP blocks of a chip like maybe working around bugs in the latest GPU IP integrated into an SOC like that used on the Raspberry Pi.
7. Test engineers - the guys that write test patterns to test a chip after it has been fabricated and packaged. You could go software or hardware for these jobs. Bachelor degree needed.
8. Packaging engineer - the people that design the packages that the bare silicon gets mounted to. All kinds of folks in this field - physics, mechanical engineers, materials guys. This is a fairly broad field.
9. Hardware engineer - designs the pcb's that the chips get mounted too. Your "classic electrical engineering" job IMO. Bachelors in EE with a focus on electronics and circuit design.
In general you'll need a degree from a decent engineering college to get your foot in the door. Software generally doesn't have this barrier. Look for internships at chip companies.
- BostonEnginerd 6y agoDon't forget all of the infrastructure needed on the fab side -- safety engineers, industrial engineers, operators, etc.
- franklampard 6y agoI commend you for saying the question is too broad and then break it down for the asker. I thought you are going to dismiss it lol
- blkhp19 6y agoI definitely don’t think it was your intention to send a “this is a male’s job” message, but some readers might interpret it that way (even subconsciously) if we use language like “software guys” instead of software developers. There are definitely women working in all of these areas, and hopefully many more in the future!
- formercoder 6y agoIt’s funny how dropping “guys” is such low hanging D&I fruit but also so hard to do. I try to use “folks” and honestly have started saying y’all a lot.
- chestervonwinch 6y agoAs someone raised in the north US, living the last ~8 years between Florida and Texas has helped break the “you guys” habit. However, I admit that I still feel like an imposter whenever I use “y’all”.
- twalla 6y agoY’all is a single syllable, rolls off the tongue and is gender neutral. By the power vested in me by the State of Texas, I hereby grant the reader (herein referred to as “all y’all”) permission to use “y’all” in perpetuity.
- formercoder 6y agoThanks, much appreciated.
- _nothing 6y agoI grew up near Chicago, currently live in Canada, and I say "y'all" all the time. I feel kind of self-conscious about it too but I asked a friend here if it was weird for me to say and she says she also says it all the time, so.
- Chris2048 6y ago
- etimberg 6y agoFor 3, I think you're likely needing a bachelor's in EE or more these days. I have some friends who do this and a lot of the hand layouts are for standard cells or high speed analog parts where you need the EE knowledge to understand what you're laying out. Depending on where OP is located and where they want to go to school, internships are a good route. I went to the University of Toronto where there's an optional 16 month co-op program [0]. AMD for example, hires lots of students (I did this many years ago on a team doing analog circuit design). 0. https://engineeringcareers.utoronto.ca/work-experience-programs/professional-experience-year-co-op-program-pey-co-op/ https://engineeringcareers.utoronto.ca/work-experience-progr...
- sasaf5 6y ago10. RTL designer - uses the gates made by #1 to implement digital circuits that go through the tests of #4 and is placed in the chip by #3. Does a similar job as #5, but not limited to CPUs. To join the band, get a degree in EE or CS and practice on FPGAs. Make sure you get domain knowledge on the specific thing you are implementing: digital communications, audio, IO protocols, networks etc...
- kumarharsh 6y agoIf this was reddit, you'd be swimming in reddit gold by now :-) That's an amazingly detailed answer.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- fulafel 6y agoAlso all the work in companies making fab equipment.
- JoachimS 6y ago11. EDA tool developers. The EDA vendors are huge employers of developers, and esp for backend tools you need not only to be able to deal with algo scalability issues (the datasets are enormous), but also understand more and more of the actual physics, electrical engineering aspects. Very interesting combination. But also, most customers also develop their own tools, scripts, automation of toolchains etc. And the HW dev toolchains are much bigger than what you have in SW. At the ASIC shop I used to work (with about 40 engineers) we had 3-4 people full time on tools, environment, methodology.
- amelius 6y ago(If you work in EDA, please make your tools more FOSS-friendly. Quality of tooling is quite bad in this respect across the entire industry.)
- phlipski 6y agoThis is a good point I forgot to expand upon. The EDA (Electronic Design Automation) industry is a hugely import symbiotic relationship to the chip industry at this point. The two sort of go back and forth driving each other forward.
- physicsguy 6y ago+ then there's things around this like thermal engineer - design verification and simulations.
- unixhero 6y agoAll I want is to go to sales expos and wear an Intel tshirt.
- spicymaki 6y ago12. Debug Engineer - identifies/triages/drives resolution of complex ASIC, firmware, spec-violation issues. Good fit for a jack of all trades works with hardware (design/validation), firmware, software (kernel/driver), and architecture teams. Requires a bachelors in EE/CS or higher.