Back in July, the IC Design Committee proudly brought the inaugural Summer Camp — IC Design Your Future to the students. This is in partnership with NTU, NUS and SUTD; and strongly supported by EDB.
It was a 3-Days immersive program from 20 to 22 July 2022, which gave the university undergraduates in the faculties of Electrical, Electronics, Computing and Design Engineering, who might be interested to join the IC Design sector in the near future a glimpse of the semiconductor industry.
This program provided the students an opportunity to learn more about the Semiconductor and Electronics industry, IC Design career prospect, visits to leading multi-national companies such as AMD and GlobalFoundries; and most importantly, to provide the opportunities to interact with various Semiconductor companies’ industry leaders and members to experience the vibrancy, focus and passion of the semiconductor industry.
Industry leaders and experts were invited to share about the Semiconductor and Electronics industry trends, IC Design sector driving new innovations, overview of wafer Fab processing and Backend packaging & test, as well as panellists sharing vast experiences of their career in the industry. And lastly, not forgetting the #AskMeAnything sessions with AMD and GF team, sharing their experiences by their very own team members.
The visit at AMD allowed students to experience the work nature at product company, IC Designers roles and career prospect. They got to appreciate the value-add of chip design enabling powerful computing processing applications, providing solutions to modern world challenges. They also got to experience the culture of teamwork and collaboration, as well as the semiconductor industry emphasis on diversity and inclusion.
“Chip design has become one of the key differentiators at major tech companies. We’re in a renaissance for the semiconductor industry, which makes it the perfect time to capitalize on the high level of awareness and interest, to build an even stronger pipeline of IC design talents to accelerate growth in this sector.”
—Mr Eu Gene Goh, Senior Director, Design Engineering, AMD, and Co-Chair of IC Design Committee
#AskMeAnything at GlobalFoundries
At GlobalFoundries, the students experienced the manufacturing Fab—an enabler of fabrication of integrated circuit chips. The students had the privilege to experience a Fab tour into the cleanroom, getting first-hand experience of Operations Excellence; in terms of how GF plans and executes the Fab tour, Failure Analysis Lab Tour and SPICE simulation Lab Tour for multiple groups concurrently.
“I hope to encourage women to join a traditionally male-dominated industry and persevere through unique yet rewarding challenges. With a consistent pipeline of talents from future generations, Singapore can continue to attract world-class semiconductor companies to set up or expand operations here.”
—Ms Gn Fang Hong, Senior Director, GlobalFoundries, and IC Design Committee Member
The Summer Camp wrapped up with an Innovation Day where the students experienced hands-on setup, solutioning and problem-solving with the PYNQ-car mini competition, supported by the AMD team. PYNQ is a Python productivity on Zynq, which is an open-source software framework that makes it convenient for engineers to develop embedded systems on AMD/ Xilinx Zynq SoC devices. The students had an immersive experience using hardware and software to execute certain route challenges with the PYNQ-car. The can-do attitude exhibited by the young talents and learning experience were most remarkable.
It was delightful to see the active engagement of the students and their vibrant smiles throughout the IC Design Summer Camp. We look forward to many more young talents joining the semiconductor industry in the very near future.
AMD Team and Participating Students
Read more about the IC Design Summer Camp here.
Contributed by:
IC Design Committee
