What is the best path to become a CPU Architect/designer: Master Degree in Computer Architecture or IC Design?

[Sujeto_1]

Having already a Systems Engineering Bachelor, Which one do you think is the best path to get deep into become a CPU Architect/designer and find a job in CPU companies, including but not limited to Intel, AMD, Qualcomm etc.

 

[i7Baby]

You need to approach them. Find a way in. Make a connection.

Go to presentations. Get info about the company and products. Research where they do what. Try and find a contact in Personnel or other department. Look for job ads. Find personnel agents who work for them.

The hardest part - talk to them. Tell them about your aspirations and work ethic. See if they have recruitment and trainee programs. Or any employment opportunities - even if its not in your chosen field. See if you can get a foot in the door. become part of the company. Keep aware of internal job ads. Find out and casually meet people in the departments closer to where you want to work. Socialise with staff. Join employee sports and interest clubs. Join outside engineering organisations. Go to seminars, presentations and lectures. Make circle of contacts and friends in the industry. Make yourself aware of the competition and trends in product development. Look for opportunities to make presentations of your own within the company. Become noticed. Further your education.

 

[Sujeto_1]

Some of the things mentioned is currently being done, to finish my master I have to read a lot of state-of-art papers, also i'm checking the jobs ads, for internals and for regulars. Acording to job ads, it seems that there is two main divisions, Computer Scientists and Electronic Engineers.

But this is not my question, my question is from the pure Academical point of view, what is the more approachable school for a CPU Designer career. I may think Electronics and Communications, but in fact, I may dare to say they are not able to see the design of a CPU so deep and detailed as might a Computer Scientist focused in Computer architecture be certified to.

I don't know, what do you think.

 

[i7Baby]

CPU Design is a specialist filed that I doubt there'd be any formal course in. But look at local Uni websites and dig down through subjects and curriculum to see if they cover this at all. I did Electrical and Electronics. We covered CPU architecture in 2nd year. But only the surface. We also covered doping and silicon lithography for simple devices - diodes, transistors, flip-flops and gates. But not anything as big as a complete CPU.
There'd be specialist software for this stuff. An individual could not detail design the complete detail (billions of transistors) in a life time. Like any design process there'd be a team including a project manager. Step 1 - requirements Analysis (Product Brief). I worked in QA at Bosch for a while.

 

[Sujeto_1]

So is your opinion that a Bachelor Degree would be enough for this, and only rest to go find a job/contacts in cpu company? is there nothing more that University can offer me anymore?

 

[i7Baby]

You'd have to look. I'm in Australia and I finished my Engineering degree a long time ago. Might be different now and in the US.

 

[Pinhedd]

Having already a Systems Engineering Bachelor, Which one do you think is the best path to get deep into become a CPU Architect/designer and find a job in CPU companies, including but not limited to Intel, AMD, Qualcomm etc.

You'll need a bachelor's degree in computer engineering or electrical engineering to get started. If you want to work on the fun stuff, get some work experience and then pursue a masters degree.

 

[gamerk316]

For CPU design, you're going to have to have a strong background in EE, most likely, nevermind the PC side of things. But it's a VERY specialized field, and job openings are going to be few and far between.

 

[Sujeto_1]

Having already a Systems Engineering Bachelor, Which one do you think is the best path to get deep into become a CPU Architect/designer and find a job in CPU companies, including but not limited to Intel, AMD, Qualcomm etc.

You'll need a bachelor's degree in computer engineering or electrical engineering to get started. If you want to work on the fun stuff, get some work experience and then pursue a masters degree.

My bachelor degree is Systems Engineer and is equivalent to Computer Engineering almost totally. I'm talking about Master Degree, is the perfect time to get deep into a certain field, to say go Electronics, is a wide answer and i think i'm elaborating my question good enough.

I'm not sure what to think when I ask which research field is better to approach a CPU Designer career and somebody answer me: "Social contacts". Seriously?

For CPU design, you're going to have to have a strong background in EE, most likely, nevermind the PC side of things. But it's a VERY specialized field, and job openings are going to be few and far between.

This one is interesting though, but actually, the meaning of a Master and a PhD degree is right that one, "to specialize", most of PhD students who I know are working toward a technology which is not completely developed or are in fact new.

However could you elaborate more, how job openings will be few, compared to what exactly? Where the most of the job requirements going right now according to your experience?

Don't misunderstand, all your opinions are valid for me, I'm just playing a bit of opposition thesis.

 

[i7Baby]

Which part of CPU design do you want to be involved in? These days, its a team of hundreds of engineers that work on a new design. Sometimes its just a minor re-hash of an old design eg to lower power consumption. But it requires project managers, costing people, marketing people, manufacturing engineers, QA engineers, manufacturing engineers, supplier representatives, etc etc

 

[Sujeto_1]

There you go i7Baby, that's when I say I don't know which part of the CPU I would like to design, but surely is the part inside of it, not marketing, nor seller, nor costing but maybe those who take care of the "real job"of rehashing that old CPU with less consumption as you mentioned, which I'm totally agreed must be a huge team. Certainly I'm not interested on the post design process, I understand there is a team who design and validate, then send the orders to factory for production. Of course the designing team must be huge, and the people who manage projects must be highly educated people, either on academy or trough many years of experience in fables semiconductors companies, we are talking about billions of transistors.

 

[i7Baby]

And the design goes through several stages including use of several software packages eg to determine the lithography machine control. You cannot isolate design from manufacture. You could find out what software is used for what and become familiar with some of it. Get a jump ahead of the competition. You can go on tours of chip manufacturers too.

 

[Sujeto_1]

I7Baby where do you work, or what do you do there as a EE Engineer?

 

[i7Baby]

I left ages ago. I was in QA - making sure they could go through the design steps properly and solve problems properly.

 

[Pinhedd]

And the design goes through several stages including use of several software packages eg to determine the lithography machine control. You cannot isolate design from manufacture. You could find out what software is used for what and become familiar with some of it. Get a jump ahead of the competition. You can go on tours of chip manufacturers too.

I don't agree with that. It is actually standard to perform design separate from implementation. Design is of course constrained by the limitations of the physical process; size, defect density, signal skew, power consumption, and the standard cell library all put limitations on what designs can actually be implemented, but RTL is inherently abstract and hence independent of the physical process used to manufacture the integrated circuit.