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China aims to shake US grip on chip design tools

nullifidian 6y ago
>Veteran engineers and high-level executives are leaving top U.S. chip design toolmakers for Chinese rivals as Beijing looks to break America's near monopoly on this key segment of the semiconductor industry. Are they of Chinese descent? It sounds dubious that a lot of engineers leave to work in Chinese startups.
- anaganisk 6y ago
  Are people working in American startups from american descent? Im sure there are thousands of Indian, Pakistani or other country people employed right now, so do you think they would be loyal to US startups?
  - nullifidian 6y ago
    I would assume more loyal than to Chinese startups. As far as I understand China is not a very immigrant friendly country. "Successful applicants are required to renounce any foreign nationalities they have.[46] Naturalization is exceptionally rare in mainland China; there were only 1,448 naturalized persons reported in the 2010 census[47] out of the country's total population of 1.34 billion.[48] "
    - varispeed 6y ago
      You don't need Chinese citizenship to work in China also likely China will offer special terms to engineers willing to relocate.
      - formerly_proven 6y ago
        They do.
      - PakG1 6y ago
        https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3023635/shenzhen-needs-attract-overseas-talent-fuel-greater-bay-areas-hi-tech https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3023635/shenzhen-ne... That programme offers one-off subsidies, ranging from 800,000 yuan (US$113,488) to 1.5 million yuan, in addition to welfare packages covering family members, rental allowances and medical care. More than 96 per cent of the talents recruited under the Peacock Plan holds a doctorate, and 94 per cent are Chinese returnees. Shenzhen has also pledged to extend tax breaks to top overseas and local talent, which could be as low as 15 per cent of a person’s annual income compared with as high as 45 per cent previously, under China’s progressive taxation system. To date, the city has been helping develop at least 10 laboratories in collaboration with Nobel laureates involved in natural sciences. Nine of these have been completed as of June this year. Shenzhen’s hi-tech companies are also sparing no efforts in wooing talent with high pay. Last month, Huawei announced plans to lure gifted new recruits with “top-notch” salaries.
        varispeed 6y ago
        Some western countries are approaching thresholds like 45% for specialist income. For example in the UK after recent changes to IR35, an engineer will likely have to pay about 54% of tax assuming he or she gets paid market rates and the client will declare them to be deemed employees to be safe. If China could match western rates, but added tax exemptions on top, plus located the sites somewhere warm with good amenities, they could attract good people without even trying much.
        Bayart 6y ago
        The problem is being paid in a currency that's worthless outside of China and can't be converted back to anything serious. It's fine for Chinese expatriates who went abroad for better money, but I can't see the rest being too interested.
        MacsHeadroom 6y ago
        That's ridiculous. CNY is as easily converted as USD, if not more easily.
    - legolas2412 6y ago
      And usa isn't particularly immigrant friendly to employment based immigration, specially for those from India. Out of 500k green cards every year, only 15k are for eb1,2,3 employment based immigration, with country of birth based limitations on top!
      - kamaal 6y ago
        As an Indian, I can say Indians will go anywhere. Gulf has way more harsher visa conditions, with no citizenship path and yet Indians flock to the Gulf. It is crazy to think that people won't sell their services for money, because of loyalty or whatever. For the common man, their own career is what they care about. And for a good reason, especially in a country where every wants to hoard money at any cost- No one's going to miss out on an opportunity of this kind.
    - mytailorisrich 6y ago
      > As far as I understand China is not a very immigrant friendly country. China is very flexible. There may be difficulties in getting citizenship (which is another issue, really), but for work visas to foreign talents, which are sponsored by local companies, this is simply a matter of applying in order to get one.
      - kube-system 6y ago
        Being “immigrant friendly” consists of more than issuing a visa.
        mytailorisrich 6y ago
        They are very friendly to foreign talents. A lot of misconceptions and FUD here. And I write that as someone who spent 3 years living in China and working for a JV. If you want to emigrate there permanently this may be different but realistically this is not the topic of this discussion, which is more about highly educated people finding opportunities in China.
- varispeed 6y ago
  If engineers are underpaid then why would anyone wonder they go to someone offering better terms? You won't feed your family and fulfil your dreams with patriotism.
  - adriancr 6y ago
    Depends if you need to move to China or not, working in the US for China is likely still going to be restricted.
- Hokusai 6y ago
  > Are they of Chinese descent? Extremely weird question. We live in a competitive global market, people can and will move countries for better opportunities. USA used to just receive talent as it was way richer that any other country. That times are over now. I understand that it will take some time for Americans and many people in other for countries to accept this new reality, thou.
  - josefresco 6y ago
    Instead of dismissing and criticizing the question, reply with data, references or even anecdotal experience.
  - StartupTree 6y ago
    Humanity does do not live in your idealised competitive global market. There is a very limited subset of US engineers who would relocate to China.
    - motoboi 6y ago
      And you are saying that based on which data?
      - kube-system 6y ago
        Expatriates represent less than 1% of people, and market analysts categorize movement between countries into “inbound countries” and “outbound countries”. https://www.finaccord.com/Home/About-Us/Press-Releases/Global-Expatriates-Size,-Segmentation-and-Forecas https://www.finaccord.com/Home/About-Us/Press-Releases/Globa...
    - lnsru 6y ago
      I don’t know about USA, but many many Germans went there to work in rising automotive sector. The growth opportunities are insane while building future without internal combustion engines.
      - 6y ago
- karmasimida 6y ago
  Well, just to lay out the facts. The soon to be past administration makes the rhetoric so hostile that immigration to US becomes substantially harder and less attractive. It is hard to not feel that aliens, especially those who work in tech, are unwanted and targeted according to the administration's agenda.
- tjpnz 6y ago
  I would be interested in hearing more about this. Living in Japan or South Korea can be a very rough transition for some (I've witnessed my fair share of colleagues exiting Japan after only a few months). Mainland China would present many of the same challenges with the addition of living under an autocratic regime.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Lots of people on HN say, whenever the topic comes up, that they don't care about politics and don't want to hear about it. In China, you can have that!
  - spacemanmatt 6y ago
    I would be interested in living in a version of the U.S. where citizens recognize autocracy by the behavior, instead of depending on their television to inform them.
    - the-dude 6y ago
      What are you hinting at? The Bush administrations?
      - spacemanmatt 6y ago
        I think you're onto something, there, with that.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Having lived in China and visited Japan on a number of occasion, my feeling is that it would be more difficult to live in Japan than in China as a Westerner. I think that many people overestimate the impact of living under China's "autocratic regime" has on daily life. Especially if you're a Westerner there is no difference. I have always felt that Japanese culture and society were more difficult to adapt to. China is much less rigid. Obviously it's still a big cultural and linguistic change.
    - 6y ago
- baybal2 6y ago
  > Are they of Chinese descent? It sounds dubious that a lot of engineers leave to work in Chinese startups. Out of EDA companies that are in US, only Synopsys, and MG comes to mind. MG is now Siemens, and they are now full tiers behind Synopsys, and Cadence, after their sale. So no wonder of the exodus. I heard a saying "EDA industry is much like CAD software, but worse." People working on top tier EDAs need to be heads above their peers academically, know both tons of rarely going together disciplines like computer science, and process engineering, but they are also very poorly remunerated for their outstanding level of knowledge because the industry is so tiny. And yes, I never saw a shortage of Western engineers working in China, with them often calling themselves "labour market refugees." It feels the West is set on to effectively exterminating whatever serious industries it has left, with loss of semiconductor manufacturing being the most glaring, and extreme example. Some chips these days simply don't have datasheets in English.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Having worked in the EDA industry, I can quite believe it, it's stagnant and not capable of paying SV money for much rarer skills. But .. > The West is set on to effectively exterminating whatever serious industries they have left .. this is hardly deliberate. "The West" is not a single actor with a single intent.
  - MacsHeadroom 6y ago
    More recently, half the time I can't even find a datasheet in Chinese. Is there a Chinese website/repository similar to wikichip?
  - suifbwish 6y ago
    When the last civilian industry of a nation fails, it will suddenly become evident why so much money has been spent on maintaining a powerful military. If you can’t make something yourself you make an excuse to invade someone who can make it.
throwaway4good 6y ago
Eventually a group will breakout of ASML to serve the Chinese market because, regardless of sanctions, that is where the growth and possibilities are.
- adriancr 6y ago
  Depends how hard the US will enforce the restrictions. A group breaking out of ASML would still need a company, is that company going to be in the EU, Japan, US?, if so, restrictions still apply. I'm not sure people will like moving to China to work on chip tech and possibly end up on US lists. Then there's the problem of the whole manufacturing and software tech that is likely closely guarded by ASML, and the massive capital investments to actually get anything done.
  - throwaway4good 6y ago
    A company in Europe is not subject to US law unless it does business there. The US prevents eg. ASML in doing business with eg. Huawei by threatening to cut off ASML's access to American suppliers and customers.
    - yorwba 6y ago
      A company in Europe is still subject to US pressure on their own government, even if the company itself doesn't do business in the US. The US prevented ASML from selling their EUV machines in China by pressuring the Dutch government not to renew ASML's export license, presumably by threatening more than just ASML's access to American suppliers and customers. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asml-holding-usa-china-insight-idUSKBN1Z50HN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asml-holding-usa-china-in...
      - Throwawayaerlei 6y ago
        Several things make this potentially interesting. The lasers that hit the droplets of tin in ASML's EUV machines come from the US. On the other hand, just who is going to be buying EUV machines in the future? Global Foundries has dropped out of the game of cutting edge logic, and Intel shows every sign of never being able to move past their 14 nm node. Their 10 nm node is all 193 nm UV, they're only adopting EUV for their 7 nm node, which is now also failing to deliver the goods. Samsung and TSMC can expand only so fast. Are their other types of chips which are using EUV, or are anticipated to use it in the future, like memory?
high_derivative 6y ago
Something that always struck me as funny is that HW roles at FAANGs/Silicon Valley in general are paid worse than software roles. It makes sense in that software is more profitable, but a lot of employers who do this (big techs) are not really cash strapped or sensitive for cost. It is so much much harder to find great HW compiler engineers with deep toolchain knowledge than another leetcode SWE. Seems a serious blindspot.
- RavlaAlvar 6y ago
  Same in China, people working in internet giant like Alibaba and tencent earn 3 times the salary more than people working in HW.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  It's not just about profitability but rather about how many players are out there. Fewer players, fewer customers and much lower barrier to entry means more mobility which means employees have the ability to demand more. Hardware also requires more experience and if we are honest more education to get into, there is some weird state of fields which on one hand require so much to enter but on the other pay quite below what one would expect and hardware design is just one of them.
f00zz 6y ago
Not a hardware engineer, but I've dabbled a bit with very basic CPU design using an open source Verilog compiler and simulator (specifically, Icarus Verilog). Just out of curiosity, what do proprietary tools in this space offer that open source ones don't?
- pjc50 6y ago
  Support is a non-trivial benefit when mistakes or delays cost money. The feature set of proprietary EDA is huge, and the place & route optimisers have been tuned for years. Sure, it costs $250k for a Synopsys license with the full suite of tools; it also costs far more than that to have to redo a mask set, lose your slot in the fab's calendar, etc.
- rasz 6y ago
  Article is about tools for synthesizing ASICs, at least one layer deeper than FPGA.
- petermonsson 6y ago
  They offer productivity. Commercial tools have simulation speed and a half decent visual debugger for example. The bar is not that high, but Icarus is behind in these two areas
- doix 6y ago
  I work in the industry but don't have a perfect understanding of everything, hopefully someone will correct any mistakes in my explanation. So Icarus Verilog can only be used for simulation, you will never produce a physical chip using (only) this tool. I guess I'll quickly start with the end goal. Assuming you don't have your own fab and want to get something manufactured by one of the fabs, you'll most likely send them a GDS file[0]. It's basically a file that contains coordinates for a bunch of rectangles and their layer which define how the mask [1] should look like. How do you go from verilog to a GDS file? Well it's a pretty long process, none of the steps can be done with Icarus Verilog: 1. Synthesis, this will synthesize (coming from the software world, I guess you could call this "compile") your verilog into standard cells(imagine AND/NOT/OR gates) and how they are connected. * These standard cells come from a PDK[2](process design kit) which will be supplied to you by your semiconductor fab. I think if you wanted to break into the industry, supporting PDKs will be a pain. Allegedly there is OpenAccess[3] which is meant to allow for a "standard" way of developing these PDK's, but I'm not convinced. 2. Placement, your chip is a rectangle of a certain size (you decide the size, the bigger, the more expensive it'll be since wafters are fixed size) and it needs to fit all those standard cells. A tool will figure out how to optimally place them. There are certain rules it needs to follow defined by your PDK. 3. Routing, you've placed the cells on your chip, but they aren't connected. A tool will find an optimal?(maybe?) solution on how to connect the standard cells so that it matches the netlist generated in step 1. This pretty much gets you the GDS. 3.a. After everything has been routed, you can extract the physical properties from the layout and resimulate everything with the "real" design. When you were simulating with icarus verilog, it was just checking that the logic is sound. It didn't have any of the real world delays, with the extractd netlist, you can simulate it with the delays. I'm pretty sure Icarus Verilog would support this, I think the delays are just implemented with "`delay X" statements, but I might be wrong. Now this primarily deals with the "digital" part of the chip. Now I'm a bit unsure about this part, but I'm pretty sure you can't just make a "digital" (i.e verilog) only chip. I'm assuming at a bare minimum any product now days will have some ESD protection which will require at least a bit of custom. For the analogue part of the chip, it's completely separate form Icarus Verilog. Analog designers will be manually placing transistors to create circuits for the chip. The PDK will define how the transistors behave under different voltages/temperatures/process corners[4]. They will then simulate their circuit to see if it works. To go from the circuit they designed to the GDS, someone (a person) will go through the circuit and manually layout their circuit. There are tools that check that the manual layout process matches the schematic/circuit (LVS – layout vs schematic). There are a bunch of design rules that the fab will specify (DRC, design rule checks) that the layout needs to meet, there are tools which will check those for you. Basically, a bunch of tools and licenses you need to pay these vendors for. Normally someone will pull in the synthesized digital into the analogue layout to create the final GDS before it’s sent to the fab. I hope that gives you a peek into what’s involved in making these chips from a tools perspective. These EDA tool licenses are almost all token based and use FlexLm[5]. You're paying per instance of the tool running. Most of the simulations run in parallel and take multiple tokens. The licensing costs for these things go into multi-millions for any decently sized semi-conductor company. Apologizes in advance for any inaccuracies or any omissions. There's definitely a lot more stuff involved in the process, but the comment was getting really long already. notes: I've used verilog everywhere, but it might as well be VHDL or any other HDL. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDSII https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDSII [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photomask https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photomask [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_design_kit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_design_kit [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAccess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAccess [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_corners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_corners [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlexNet_Publisher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlexNet_Publisher
kyaghmour 6y ago
I would expect there would be better ROI in funding the development of open source EDA tools. This is already ongoing and the current trade conflict will likely accelerate it.
neya 6y ago
No one has the balls to report that it's more than just a common occurrence that many Chinese employees engage in IP theft casually. And this plays a huge role in gaining competitive advantage for the Chinese companies benefiting off IP theft, needless to say. There are ample real world reports of such occurrences, even.
- baybal2 6y ago
  You can at least see a difference from casually downloading pirated Cadence soft from Chinese FTPs =D. But saying this, you think would anybody there decide to pay $1M just to order few hundred Cadence licenses (and this is on the low end,) when they can not to with zero consequences? This is more than the total capital of most semiconductor companies there. I'd say people doing that have different aims. They "grew out" of pirated Cadence, and now want more serious tools like ones custom made Cadence makes for top tier clients like Intel, Apple, NVidia, and AMD.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  And it's not fresh hires either. https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-sentenced-exporting-sensitive-military-related-technology-china https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-...
- bsder 6y ago
  Jokes on China, though. The people with useful knowledge left Cadence, Synopsys, etc. decades ago. Just take a look at the horrible state of the Design Automation Conference over the past 10 years.
simonblack 6y ago
It comes down to the old managerial quandary of "Do we buy-built? It'll be cheaper and faster, but keeps us dependent on others" or "Do we build our own? It'll be slower and more expensive, but we won't be dependent on others, and we may be able to compete and recoup our expenses." Most managers prefer to buy-built wherever they can. It's more efficient. But they are happy to 'Build our own" whenever forced to, as they will get the advantages further down the track. The US complains that China doesn't buy enough US exports from them, but bans the Chinese from buying the stuff that they actually want. That's short-term thinking. China would be quite happy to keep buying cheap US semiconductors, US semiconductor companies would be very happy selling billions of dollars worth of chips to China. WIN-WIN. China is now forced to 'Build Their Own'. They will do that. Their fabs will be newer. They will cover their own requirements first, then compete with the US chip manufacturers who previously held a monopoly. And the net result? US semiconductor chip manufacturing will go the way of US auto manufacturing, US textile manufacturing, US paper manufacturing, US steel manufacturing, etc.

>Veteran engineers and high-level executives are leaving top U.S. chip design toolmakers for Chinese rivals as Beijing looks to break America's near monopoly on this key segment of the semiconductor industry. Are they of Chinese descent? It sounds dubious that a lot of engineers leave to work in Chinese startups.

anaganisk 6y ago
Are people working in American startups from american descent? Im sure there are thousands of Indian, Pakistani or other country people employed right now, so do you think they would be loyal to US startups?
- nullifidian 6y ago
  I would assume more loyal than to Chinese startups. As far as I understand China is not a very immigrant friendly country. "Successful applicants are required to renounce any foreign nationalities they have.[46] Naturalization is exceptionally rare in mainland China; there were only 1,448 naturalized persons reported in the 2010 census[47] out of the country's total population of 1.34 billion.[48] "
  - varispeed 6y ago
    You don't need Chinese citizenship to work in China also likely China will offer special terms to engineers willing to relocate.
    - formerly_proven 6y ago
      They do.
    - PakG1 6y ago
      https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3023635/shenzhen-needs-attract-overseas-talent-fuel-greater-bay-areas-hi-tech https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3023635/shenzhen-ne... That programme offers one-off subsidies, ranging from 800,000 yuan (US$113,488) to 1.5 million yuan, in addition to welfare packages covering family members, rental allowances and medical care. More than 96 per cent of the talents recruited under the Peacock Plan holds a doctorate, and 94 per cent are Chinese returnees. Shenzhen has also pledged to extend tax breaks to top overseas and local talent, which could be as low as 15 per cent of a person’s annual income compared with as high as 45 per cent previously, under China’s progressive taxation system. To date, the city has been helping develop at least 10 laboratories in collaboration with Nobel laureates involved in natural sciences. Nine of these have been completed as of June this year. Shenzhen’s hi-tech companies are also sparing no efforts in wooing talent with high pay. Last month, Huawei announced plans to lure gifted new recruits with “top-notch” salaries.
      - varispeed 6y ago
        Some western countries are approaching thresholds like 45% for specialist income. For example in the UK after recent changes to IR35, an engineer will likely have to pay about 54% of tax assuming he or she gets paid market rates and the client will declare them to be deemed employees to be safe. If China could match western rates, but added tax exemptions on top, plus located the sites somewhere warm with good amenities, they could attract good people without even trying much.
        Bayart 6y ago
        The problem is being paid in a currency that's worthless outside of China and can't be converted back to anything serious. It's fine for Chinese expatriates who went abroad for better money, but I can't see the rest being too interested.
        MacsHeadroom 6y ago
        That's ridiculous. CNY is as easily converted as USD, if not more easily.
  - legolas2412 6y ago
    And usa isn't particularly immigrant friendly to employment based immigration, specially for those from India. Out of 500k green cards every year, only 15k are for eb1,2,3 employment based immigration, with country of birth based limitations on top!
    - kamaal 6y ago
      As an Indian, I can say Indians will go anywhere. Gulf has way more harsher visa conditions, with no citizenship path and yet Indians flock to the Gulf. It is crazy to think that people won't sell their services for money, because of loyalty or whatever. For the common man, their own career is what they care about. And for a good reason, especially in a country where every wants to hoard money at any cost- No one's going to miss out on an opportunity of this kind.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    > As far as I understand China is not a very immigrant friendly country. China is very flexible. There may be difficulties in getting citizenship (which is another issue, really), but for work visas to foreign talents, which are sponsored by local companies, this is simply a matter of applying in order to get one.
    - kube-system 6y ago
      Being “immigrant friendly” consists of more than issuing a visa.
      - mytailorisrich 6y ago
        They are very friendly to foreign talents. A lot of misconceptions and FUD here. And I write that as someone who spent 3 years living in China and working for a JV. If you want to emigrate there permanently this may be different but realistically this is not the topic of this discussion, which is more about highly educated people finding opportunities in China.
varispeed 6y ago
If engineers are underpaid then why would anyone wonder they go to someone offering better terms? You won't feed your family and fulfil your dreams with patriotism.
- adriancr 6y ago
  Depends if you need to move to China or not, working in the US for China is likely still going to be restricted.
Hokusai 6y ago
> Are they of Chinese descent? Extremely weird question. We live in a competitive global market, people can and will move countries for better opportunities. USA used to just receive talent as it was way richer that any other country. That times are over now. I understand that it will take some time for Americans and many people in other for countries to accept this new reality, thou.
- josefresco 6y ago
  Instead of dismissing and criticizing the question, reply with data, references or even anecdotal experience.
- StartupTree 6y ago
  Humanity does do not live in your idealised competitive global market. There is a very limited subset of US engineers who would relocate to China.
  - motoboi 6y ago
    And you are saying that based on which data?
    - kube-system 6y ago
      Expatriates represent less than 1% of people, and market analysts categorize movement between countries into “inbound countries” and “outbound countries”. https://www.finaccord.com/Home/About-Us/Press-Releases/Global-Expatriates-Size,-Segmentation-and-Forecas https://www.finaccord.com/Home/About-Us/Press-Releases/Globa...
  - lnsru 6y ago
    I don’t know about USA, but many many Germans went there to work in rising automotive sector. The growth opportunities are insane while building future without internal combustion engines.
    - 6y ago
karmasimida 6y ago
Well, just to lay out the facts. The soon to be past administration makes the rhetoric so hostile that immigration to US becomes substantially harder and less attractive. It is hard to not feel that aliens, especially those who work in tech, are unwanted and targeted according to the administration's agenda.
tjpnz 6y ago
I would be interested in hearing more about this. Living in Japan or South Korea can be a very rough transition for some (I've witnessed my fair share of colleagues exiting Japan after only a few months). Mainland China would present many of the same challenges with the addition of living under an autocratic regime.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Lots of people on HN say, whenever the topic comes up, that they don't care about politics and don't want to hear about it. In China, you can have that!
- spacemanmatt 6y ago
  I would be interested in living in a version of the U.S. where citizens recognize autocracy by the behavior, instead of depending on their television to inform them.
  - the-dude 6y ago
    What are you hinting at? The Bush administrations?
    - spacemanmatt 6y ago
      I think you're onto something, there, with that.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  Having lived in China and visited Japan on a number of occasion, my feeling is that it would be more difficult to live in Japan than in China as a Westerner. I think that many people overestimate the impact of living under China's "autocratic regime" has on daily life. Especially if you're a Westerner there is no difference. I have always felt that Japanese culture and society were more difficult to adapt to. China is much less rigid. Obviously it's still a big cultural and linguistic change.
  - 6y ago
baybal2 6y ago
> Are they of Chinese descent? It sounds dubious that a lot of engineers leave to work in Chinese startups. Out of EDA companies that are in US, only Synopsys, and MG comes to mind. MG is now Siemens, and they are now full tiers behind Synopsys, and Cadence, after their sale. So no wonder of the exodus. I heard a saying "EDA industry is much like CAD software, but worse." People working on top tier EDAs need to be heads above their peers academically, know both tons of rarely going together disciplines like computer science, and process engineering, but they are also very poorly remunerated for their outstanding level of knowledge because the industry is so tiny. And yes, I never saw a shortage of Western engineers working in China, with them often calling themselves "labour market refugees." It feels the West is set on to effectively exterminating whatever serious industries it has left, with loss of semiconductor manufacturing being the most glaring, and extreme example. Some chips these days simply don't have datasheets in English.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Having worked in the EDA industry, I can quite believe it, it's stagnant and not capable of paying SV money for much rarer skills. But .. > The West is set on to effectively exterminating whatever serious industries they have left .. this is hardly deliberate. "The West" is not a single actor with a single intent.
- MacsHeadroom 6y ago
  More recently, half the time I can't even find a datasheet in Chinese. Is there a Chinese website/repository similar to wikichip?
- suifbwish 6y ago
  When the last civilian industry of a nation fails, it will suddenly become evident why so much money has been spent on maintaining a powerful military. If you can’t make something yourself you make an excuse to invade someone who can make it.

throwaway4good 6y ago

Eventually a group will breakout of ASML to serve the Chinese market because, regardless of sanctions, that is where the growth and possibilities are.

adriancr 6y ago
Depends how hard the US will enforce the restrictions. A group breaking out of ASML would still need a company, is that company going to be in the EU, Japan, US?, if so, restrictions still apply. I'm not sure people will like moving to China to work on chip tech and possibly end up on US lists. Then there's the problem of the whole manufacturing and software tech that is likely closely guarded by ASML, and the massive capital investments to actually get anything done.
- throwaway4good 6y ago
  A company in Europe is not subject to US law unless it does business there. The US prevents eg. ASML in doing business with eg. Huawei by threatening to cut off ASML's access to American suppliers and customers.
  - yorwba 6y ago
    A company in Europe is still subject to US pressure on their own government, even if the company itself doesn't do business in the US. The US prevented ASML from selling their EUV machines in China by pressuring the Dutch government not to renew ASML's export license, presumably by threatening more than just ASML's access to American suppliers and customers. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asml-holding-usa-china-insight-idUSKBN1Z50HN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asml-holding-usa-china-in...
    - Throwawayaerlei 6y ago
      Several things make this potentially interesting. The lasers that hit the droplets of tin in ASML's EUV machines come from the US. On the other hand, just who is going to be buying EUV machines in the future? Global Foundries has dropped out of the game of cutting edge logic, and Intel shows every sign of never being able to move past their 14 nm node. Their 10 nm node is all 193 nm UV, they're only adopting EUV for their 7 nm node, which is now also failing to deliver the goods. Samsung and TSMC can expand only so fast. Are their other types of chips which are using EUV, or are anticipated to use it in the future, like memory?

high_derivative 6y ago

Something that always struck me as funny is that HW roles at FAANGs/Silicon Valley in general are paid worse than software roles. It makes sense in that software is more profitable, but a lot of employers who do this (big techs) are not really cash strapped or sensitive for cost. It is so much much harder to find great HW compiler engineers with deep toolchain knowledge than another leetcode SWE. Seems a serious blindspot.

RavlaAlvar 6y ago
Same in China, people working in internet giant like Alibaba and tencent earn 3 times the salary more than people working in HW.
dogma1138 6y ago
It's not just about profitability but rather about how many players are out there. Fewer players, fewer customers and much lower barrier to entry means more mobility which means employees have the ability to demand more. Hardware also requires more experience and if we are honest more education to get into, there is some weird state of fields which on one hand require so much to enter but on the other pay quite below what one would expect and hardware design is just one of them.

f00zz 6y ago

Not a hardware engineer, but I've dabbled a bit with very basic CPU design using an open source Verilog compiler and simulator (specifically, Icarus Verilog). Just out of curiosity, what do proprietary tools in this space offer that open source ones don't?

pjc50 6y ago
Support is a non-trivial benefit when mistakes or delays cost money. The feature set of proprietary EDA is huge, and the place & route optimisers have been tuned for years. Sure, it costs $250k for a Synopsys license with the full suite of tools; it also costs far more than that to have to redo a mask set, lose your slot in the fab's calendar, etc.
rasz 6y ago
Article is about tools for synthesizing ASICs, at least one layer deeper than FPGA.
petermonsson 6y ago
They offer productivity. Commercial tools have simulation speed and a half decent visual debugger for example. The bar is not that high, but Icarus is behind in these two areas
doix 6y ago
I work in the industry but don't have a perfect understanding of everything, hopefully someone will correct any mistakes in my explanation. So Icarus Verilog can only be used for simulation, you will never produce a physical chip using (only) this tool. I guess I'll quickly start with the end goal. Assuming you don't have your own fab and want to get something manufactured by one of the fabs, you'll most likely send them a GDS file[0]. It's basically a file that contains coordinates for a bunch of rectangles and their layer which define how the mask [1] should look like. How do you go from verilog to a GDS file? Well it's a pretty long process, none of the steps can be done with Icarus Verilog: 1. Synthesis, this will synthesize (coming from the software world, I guess you could call this "compile") your verilog into standard cells(imagine AND/NOT/OR gates) and how they are connected. * These standard cells come from a PDK[2](process design kit) which will be supplied to you by your semiconductor fab. I think if you wanted to break into the industry, supporting PDKs will be a pain. Allegedly there is OpenAccess[3] which is meant to allow for a "standard" way of developing these PDK's, but I'm not convinced. 2. Placement, your chip is a rectangle of a certain size (you decide the size, the bigger, the more expensive it'll be since wafters are fixed size) and it needs to fit all those standard cells. A tool will figure out how to optimally place them. There are certain rules it needs to follow defined by your PDK. 3. Routing, you've placed the cells on your chip, but they aren't connected. A tool will find an optimal?(maybe?) solution on how to connect the standard cells so that it matches the netlist generated in step 1. This pretty much gets you the GDS. 3.a. After everything has been routed, you can extract the physical properties from the layout and resimulate everything with the "real" design. When you were simulating with icarus verilog, it was just checking that the logic is sound. It didn't have any of the real world delays, with the extractd netlist, you can simulate it with the delays. I'm pretty sure Icarus Verilog would support this, I think the delays are just implemented with "`delay X" statements, but I might be wrong. Now this primarily deals with the "digital" part of the chip. Now I'm a bit unsure about this part, but I'm pretty sure you can't just make a "digital" (i.e verilog) only chip. I'm assuming at a bare minimum any product now days will have some ESD protection which will require at least a bit of custom. For the analogue part of the chip, it's completely separate form Icarus Verilog. Analog designers will be manually placing transistors to create circuits for the chip. The PDK will define how the transistors behave under different voltages/temperatures/process corners[4]. They will then simulate their circuit to see if it works. To go from the circuit they designed to the GDS, someone (a person) will go through the circuit and manually layout their circuit. There are tools that check that the manual layout process matches the schematic/circuit (LVS – layout vs schematic). There are a bunch of design rules that the fab will specify (DRC, design rule checks) that the layout needs to meet, there are tools which will check those for you. Basically, a bunch of tools and licenses you need to pay these vendors for. Normally someone will pull in the synthesized digital into the analogue layout to create the final GDS before it’s sent to the fab. I hope that gives you a peek into what’s involved in making these chips from a tools perspective. These EDA tool licenses are almost all token based and use FlexLm[5]. You're paying per instance of the tool running. Most of the simulations run in parallel and take multiple tokens. The licensing costs for these things go into multi-millions for any decently sized semi-conductor company. Apologizes in advance for any inaccuracies or any omissions. There's definitely a lot more stuff involved in the process, but the comment was getting really long already. notes: I've used verilog everywhere, but it might as well be VHDL or any other HDL. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDSII https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDSII [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photomask https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photomask [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_design_kit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_design_kit [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAccess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAccess [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_corners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_corners [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlexNet_Publisher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlexNet_Publisher

kyaghmour 6y ago

I would expect there would be better ROI in funding the development of open source EDA tools. This is already ongoing and the current trade conflict will likely accelerate it.

neya 6y ago

No one has the balls to report that it's more than just a common occurrence that many Chinese employees engage in IP theft casually. And this plays a huge role in gaining competitive advantage for the Chinese companies benefiting off IP theft, needless to say. There are ample real world reports of such occurrences, even.

baybal2 6y ago
You can at least see a difference from casually downloading pirated Cadence soft from Chinese FTPs =D. But saying this, you think would anybody there decide to pay $1M just to order few hundred Cadence licenses (and this is on the low end,) when they can not to with zero consequences? This is more than the total capital of most semiconductor companies there. I'd say people doing that have different aims. They "grew out" of pirated Cadence, and now want more serious tools like ones custom made Cadence makes for top tier clients like Intel, Apple, NVidia, and AMD.
908B64B197 6y ago
And it's not fresh hires either. https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-sentenced-exporting-sensitive-military-related-technology-china https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-...
bsder 6y ago
Jokes on China, though. The people with useful knowledge left Cadence, Synopsys, etc. decades ago. Just take a look at the horrible state of the Design Automation Conference over the past 10 years.

simonblack 6y ago

It comes down to the old managerial quandary of "Do we buy-built? It'll be cheaper and faster, but keeps us dependent on others" or "Do we build our own? It'll be slower and more expensive, but we won't be dependent on others, and we may be able to compete and recoup our expenses." Most managers prefer to buy-built wherever they can. It's more efficient. But they are happy to 'Build our own" whenever forced to, as they will get the advantages further down the track. The US complains that China doesn't buy enough US exports from them, but bans the Chinese from buying the stuff that they actually want. That's short-term thinking. China would be quite happy to keep buying cheap US semiconductors, US semiconductor companies would be very happy selling billions of dollars worth of chips to China. WIN-WIN. China is now forced to 'Build Their Own'. They will do that. Their fabs will be newer. They will cover their own requirements first, then compete with the US chip manufacturers who previously held a monopoly. And the net result? US semiconductor chip manufacturing will go the way of US auto manufacturing, US textile manufacturing, US paper manufacturing, US steel manufacturing, etc.