Comment by jason-phillips | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jason-phillips | Hacker News Reader

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It depends on what you want to do.

If you want to work on one of the processes in the fab (metrology, chemical vapor deposition, photolithography, etc) then an engineering degree (especially chemical engineering) may be your best bet.

If you want to design the chip architecture, then computer engineering is the degree path you want. Samsung has their own chip design subsidiary in Austin too, over on Highway 360 in west Austin, if I remember correctly, called SARC.

Austin Community College has associate degree programs designed for technicians.

I was a software engineer responsible for many of the internally-facing enterprise systems, as well as the intranet. I worked with all of these engineering departments on many different projects, so I had exposure to and visibility into many functional areas and processes of a truly global, high-tech manufacturing concern. In one of the random ways the universe has rolled the dice in my favor, one day a recruiter called me and asked, "Would you like to work for Samsung?"

I know a few people who went to university near a large Intel campus that was always hiring.

These people told me that if you got hired into Intel, it was almost always as a design verification & validation engineer, and that getting an actual design (architecture) job was near impossible (especially as a recent graduate, even with an MS).

Is it the same for Samsung?

how could a new grad be qualified to design a new intel chip?

seems like those are necessary stepping stones to learn all the real world issues that would be involved in actually designing a chip.

> how could a new grad be qualified to design a new intel chip?

How could a new grad be qualified to design a new Google tool?

By being an apprentice (intern) at Google who is initially only responsible for a small bit of code (not "the tool" nor "the chip" - just a piece), and whose contributions are thoroughly reviewed and tested before pushing to production.

This comment isn't very constructive.

If they're talented and knowledgeable enough to contribute. Top tier students can do it. They don't need to start in validation.

In the Austin area for Samsung, there is an order of magnitude more staff dedicated to verification and validation as part of the manufacturing process than chip design. My perception was that the chip design folks (SARC) are like the golden children of the ecosystem. Their salaries reflect that it's obviously a more competitive, demanding environment. I don't know how hard it would be for a fab engineer to transfer positions from SAS to SARC, but I do remember that it was not a common occurrence.

There are two validation engineers for every design engineer in the semiconductor industry. There are even fewer design architects. But they all need a computer engineering background. Design verification is just what’s in demand.

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