Dear Students and Friends
Couple of days back, one of my colleagues asked what are
the prospects for the ECE branch and whether his ward will have a flourishing
career in this domain or not? I was not confident enough in answering this
question. To be honest, I told him many ECE people are coming back to the
software route. Then I found this interesting article, “America's chip land has
another potential shortage: Electronics engineers”.
Having said that, there is an interesting comment by Dr.
Sumit Gupta, Google Senior Management (Head of Product, Google Infra). Dr.
Sumit did his Btech in Electrical and Electronics from IIT Delhi (1991-95), PhD
in Computer Science (UC Irvine) and Post-Doctoral (UC San Diego).
Dr Sumit says, “CS is completely dominating mindshare
among engineering programs in high schooler's minds - I see the anecdotal
information as my own kids and their peers consider college. It's almost like
the death of Moore's law is followed by the death of EE too!”.
This is absolutely true!! Just for your information,
“Moore's law, a prediction made by American engineer Gordon Moore in 1965 that
the number of transistors per silicon chip doubles every year.” Raja Koduri,
Executive Vice President and general manager of the Accelerated Computing
Systems and Graphics Group at Intel presented an interesting statistics about
Computer Science vs. Electrical & Electronics Engineering College
Enrolment.
During 1964, Microprocessor was having the highest
popularity among EE students (100%). By 1974, this plummeted by EE students
(70%). By 1984, PC boom came but EE popularity further fell down (45%). By
1994, in the Internet Era, EE popularity gained back (70%). By 2004, Cloud Era
started and EE Popularity/ enrollment decreased to 15%. By 2014, the Smartphone
era started but popularity was stagnant at 15% and with the advent of AI, the
popularity decreased to below 10%. On the other hand, CSE 0% in 1964, 15% by
1974, 65% by 1984(PC Boom phase), then 55% by 1994 (Internet Era), 90% by 2004
(Cloud Era), 80% by 2014 (Smartphone Era) and 85% in AI Era.
How does this popularity impact the semiconductor world!
Where does it lead to? Intel needs to find 6,000 people to fill the roles in
the United States and 3,000 to take up positions in Germany in coming years! In
Texas, Samsung will need to match more than 2,000 people with high-tech
positions for its factory that is set to open in 2024. Japan needs roughly
35,000 engineers in the next decade. You know what, Intel, for instance, has
vowed to spend $100 million to improve semiconductor education and research in
the United States. Experts say that, “there is a need to improve the experience
for interns and first-timers in the industry.” This would help to fill this
gap. World needs chip architects and HDL engineers, particularly when
considering firms like Nvidia, Qualcomm, and AMD that only focus on chip
design. VLSI is going to get traction in the future.
Students, it is not just your Python or Go or Java, but
Verilog, (a hardware description language (HDL) used to model electronic
systems) can also give you a lucrative offer in future. As of now the demand is
high in US/Germany/China/Japan etc, hoping and wishing India catches this
market when we start setting up our own semiconductor fabs/manufacturing units.
Hence, I am changing my response in favour of ECE with a
great hope for the future. There is a future however, aspirants need to be
highly focussed in specific domains (Embedded Systems, VLSI,
Telecommunications, Signal Processing, Automation) and develop patience to go
deep into the design side.
Read more at
Ravi
Saripalle
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