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Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?

semiengineering.com

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Re: Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?

#11

Post by mixmastamyk »

stn8188 wrote: post #2

The subheading to this article seems a little extreme: "To fill the talent gap, CS majors could be taught to design hardware, and the EE curriculum could be adapted or even shortened." The article is more in the area of chip design and verification than PCB hardware, so I kinda understand where it's coming from.

Weird article, came to it hoping to see if I could train into a new job. But instead it went on and on about AI for almost the entire piece. Never learned what classes I might need to take or what the job prospects are.

Re: Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?

#12

Post by throwup238 »

NoiseBert69 wrote: post #5

As a computer engineer I usually copy reference schematics and board layouts from datasheets the vendors offers. 95% of my hardware problems can be solved with it. Learning KiCad took me a few evenings with YT videos (greetings to Phil!). Soldering needs much more exercise. Soldering QFN with a stencil, paste and oven (or only pre-heater) can only be learned by failing many times. Having a huge stock of good componen…

Even as a professional EE working on high speed digital and mixed signal designs (smartphones and motherboards), I used reference designs all the time, for almost every major part in a design. We had to rip up the schematics to fit our needs and follow manufacturer routing guidelines rather than copying the layout wholesale, but unless simulations told us otherwise we followed them religiously. When I started I was surprised how much of the industry is just doing the tedious work of footprint verification and PCB routing after copying existing designs and using calculators like the Saturn toolkit.

The exception was cutting edge motherboards that had to be released alongside a new Intel chipset but that project had at least a dozen engineers working in shifts.

Re: Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?

#13

Post by bee_rider »

Is the idea here that the code-generation apocalypse will leave us with a huge surplus of software folks? Enabling software people to go over to hardware seems to be putting the cart before the horse, otherwise.

Hardware people go to software because it is lower-stress and can pay better (well, at least you have a higher chance of getting rich, start-ups and all that).

Re: Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?

#14

Post by rbanffy »

dilawar wrote: post #3

EE folks should design languages because they understand hardware better?! And CS folks should design hardwares because they understand concurrency better?!

I know you said it in jest, but there is a strong justification for cross-feeding the two disciplines - on one side, we might get hardware that’s easier to program and, on the other end, we might get software that’s better tuned to the hardware it runs on.

Re: Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?

#16

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

stn8188 wrote: post #2

The subheading to this article seems a little extreme: "To fill the talent gap, CS majors could be taught to design hardware, and the EE curriculum could be adapted or even shortened." The article is more in the area of chip design and verification than PCB hardware, so I kinda understand where it's coming from.

> "CS majors could be taught to design hardware, and the EE curriculum"

"Electrical and Computer Engineering" (ECE) departments already exist and already have such a major: "Computer Engineering".

Re: Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?

#17

Post by lawstkawz »

dilawar wrote: post #3

EE folks should design languages because they understand hardware better?! And CS folks should design hardwares because they understand concurrency better?!

Working in EE post BSc in EE from 99-06, it's pretty much CS + I know how to bread board and solder if absolutely necessary.

A whole lot of my coursework could be described as UML diagramming but using glyphs for resistors and ground.

Robots handle much of the assembly work these days. Most of the human work is jotting down arbitrary notation to represent a loop or when to cache state (use a capacitor).

Software engineers have come up with a whole lot of euphemistic notations for "store this value and transform it when these signals/events occur". It's more of a psychosis that long ago quit serving humanity and became a fetish for screen addicts.

Re: Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?

#18

Post by KRAKRISMOTT »

Glyptodon wrote: post #15

I have trouble believing there's a talent shortage in the chip industry. Lots of ECE grads I know never really found jobs and moved on to other things (including SWE). Others took major detours to eventually get jobs at places like Intel.

No shortage of talent. It's just that the big players are used to cheap almost minimum wage Taiwanese wages and refuse to pay the full price of an EE.

Re: Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?

#19

Post by joezydeco »

UIUC CS grad from the late 80s. CS students had to take a track of electrical engineering courses. Physics E&M, intro EE, digital circuits, microprocessor/ALU design, microprocessor interfacing.... It paid off immensely in my embedded development career.

I'm guessing this isn't part of most curricula anymore?

Re: Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?

#20

Post by wmichelin »

joezydeco wrote: post #19

UIUC CS grad from the late 80s. CS students had to take a track of electrical engineering courses. Physics E&M, intro EE, digital circuits, microprocessor/ALU design, microprocessor interfacing.... It paid off immensely in my embedded development career. I'm guessing this isn't part of most curricula anymore?

I had to take computer architecture. We made a 4 bit CPU... or maybe it was 8 bit. I can't remember. But it was all in a software breadboard simulator thing. LogicWorks.
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