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Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?

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

#71

Post by bob1029 »

realo wrote: post #22

Not all hardware is digital. RF design, radars, etc... are more an art than a science, in many aspects. I would expect a Physics-trained student to be more adaptable to that type of EE work than a CS student...

Not all hardware is digital but we can solve most of the hard parts in the digital domain. There's no reason to do everything analog just because it starts or ends that way.

A lot of RF design has been reduced to arrays of dumb antennas that are wired together in software. Starlink is probably the best example of this right now.

You still need people who can build the analog systems and engineer the nasty parts of the signal chain, but you don't need a lot of them.

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

#72

Post by RealityVoid »

webdevver wrote: post #62

digital circuit design strikes me as a risky gambit for a career, given that almost everyone who ive bumped into in that industry was invariable not actually doing any design, but rather was tasked with writing test cases and verifying the functionality of some specific logical block. tests are ofcourse very important, but fact of the matter is, bright smart and arrogant young engineers-to-be are very eager to show e…

> and now lets count the number of companies that can put up the capital for tape-out: amd, intel, arm, nvidia, meta, aws, google chips, apple, and lets say plus 50 for fintechs, startups, and other 'smaller' orgs.

And basically anyone who has a job in tech [1] or someone who just pulled their salary out of the ATM has enough money to do a tapeout with the cash in their hand [2] or chinese students for basically free[3]. Of course, for _some_ scopes of tapeout. These are older nodes and you have limited area. But you might not need anything fancy for your design.

The rest of the post, I think has a bunch of misunderstandings or wrong facts, but I don't work in the field, (ish) so I might be as clueless as you and I need to get back to my day job so I won't try countering you just yet.

[1] https://wafer.space/ [2] https://app.tinytapeout.com/calculator?tiles=1&pcbs=1 [3] https://ysyx.oscc.cc/docs/en/

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

#73

Post by mobiuscog »

BitsAndObjects wrote: post #51
Tharre wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Chip design pays better than software in many cases and many places (US and UK included; Where are these companies? All you ever hear from the hardware side of things are that the tools suck, everyone makes you sign NDAs for everything and that the pay is around 30% less. You can come up with counterexamples like Nvidia I suppose, but that's a bit like saying just work for a startup that becomes a billion dollar…

Depends if you're looking at startups/scaleups or the big companies. Arm, Imagination Tech, etc. for a very long time did not pay anything like as well (even if you were doing software work for them). That's shifted a lot in the UK in recent years (can't speak for the rest of the world). Even so, I hear Intel and AMD still pay lower base salary than you might get at a rival startup. As for startups/scaleups, I can te…

> Senior/lead software engineer (generalist; 3+ yoe): £75k - £90k

For London. Maybe higher for Remote US.

For the rest of the country, it's a fair amount lower, typically around the £60k region.

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

#74

Post by IshKebab »

sifar wrote: post #64
IshKebab wrote: post #6

Obviously. Hardware designers absolutely love to think that hardware design is totally different to software design and only they have the skills, but in reality it's barely diffetent. Stuff runs in parallel. You occasionally have to know about really hardware things like timing and metastability. But the venn diagram of hardware/software design skills is pretty much two identical circles. The reason for the "talent…

>> Stuff runs in parallel. You occasionally have to know about really hardware things like timing and metastability. But the venn diagram of hardware/software design skills is pretty much two identical circles. I don't know your background, but this feels like from someone who hasn't worked on both the aspects for a non-trivial industry project. The thing is software spans a huge range - web FE/BE, GUI, Database, net…

> someone who hasn't worked on both the aspects for a non-trivial industry project

I have.

When I say software I mean e.g. proficient C++/Rust developers. There's absolutely no reason any of them would struggle with silicon design. Yet silicon designers treat it as if it's some fundamentally different skill, like the difference between playing a piano and a trombone, rather than something more like the difference between programming GPUs and CPUs.

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

#75

Post by IshKebab »

cracki wrote: post #44
general1465 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in my experience people with a software background make much better hardware designers than people with an EE background because they are aware of modern software best practices. I know them. Especially older folks. Ramming all parts on one huge sheet instead of separation by function. Refusing to use buses. Refusing to insert part numbers into schematics so they can just export BoM directly and writing BoM by hand…

Age has an effect, no matter if it's software or electronics. These types learned their trade once, some decades ago, and keep driving like that. If you want old dogs to learn new tricks, teach them. No company has the money to spend nor the inclination to even suggest education to their workers. Companies usually consider that a waste of time and money. I don't know why. Probably because "investing" in your work for…

> If you want old dogs to learn new tricks, teach them.

That's not really how our industry works - or even how it should work IMO.

If old dogs want to keep their jobs they should teach themselves new tricks.

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

#76

Post by throawayonthe »

RealityVoid wrote: post #70
BitsAndObjects wrote: post #30

* The fact that there are comments misunderstanding the article, that are talking about PCB Design rather than (Silicon) Chip Design, speaks to the problem facing the chip industry. Total lack of wider awareness and many misunderstandings. * Chip design pays better than software in many cases and many places (US and UK included; but excluding comparisons to Finance/FinTech software, unless you happen to be in hardwar…

> * The lack of open source hardware tools, workflows, high-quality examples, relative to the gross abundance of open source software, doesn’t help the situation, but I think it is more a symptom than it is a cause. To this, I would point to librelane/yosys/TinyTapeout/waferspace and say there are quite a bit of opportunities to learn stuff and there are oss initiative trying to _do stuff_ in this field. I wouldn't k…

that's all digital though right?

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

#77

Post by BitsAndObjects »

throawayonthe wrote: post #76
RealityVoid wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * The lack of open source hardware tools, workflows, high-quality examples, relative to the gross abundance of open source software, doesn’t help the situation, but I think it is more a symptom than it is a cause. To this, I would point to librelane/yosys/TinyTapeout/waferspace and say there are quite a bit of opportunities to learn stuff and there are oss initiative trying to _do stuff_ in this field. I wouldn't k…

that's all digital though right?

Of the things mentioned, yes. But there’s opensource analogue stuff too. Still, even with the open source stuff that there is, it’s a hard hobby to get into from scratch. The barriers to entry are still relatively high compared to just whipping up a website or toying with a Raspberry Pi.

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

#78

Post by BitsAndObjects »

mobiuscog wrote: post #73
BitsAndObjects wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends if you're looking at startups/scaleups or the big companies. Arm, Imagination Tech, etc. for a very long time did not pay anything like as well (even if you were doing software work for them). That's shifted a lot in the UK in recent years (can't speak for the rest of the world). Even so, I hear Intel and AMD still pay lower base salary than you might get at a rival startup. As for startups/scaleups, I can te…

> Senior/lead software engineer (generalist; 3+ yoe): £75k - £90k For London. Maybe higher for Remote US. For the rest of the country, it's a fair amount lower, typically around the £60k region.

I was quoting salaries for people in Bristol and Cambridge ;)

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

#79

Post by imtringued »

IshKebab wrote: post #8
IshKebab wrote: post #6

Obviously. Hardware designers absolutely love to think that hardware design is totally different to software design and only they have the skills, but in reality it's barely diffetent. Stuff runs in parallel. You occasionally have to know about really hardware things like timing and metastability. But the venn diagram of hardware/software design skills is pretty much two identical circles. The reason for the "talent…

In fact I'll go further - in my experience people with a software background make much better hardware designers than people with an EE background because they are aware of modern software best practices. Many hardware designers are happy to hack whatever together with duck tape and glue. As a result most of the hardware industry is decades behind the software industry in many ways, e.g. still relying on hacky Perl a…

>* Formal verification, which is very widely used in hardware and barely used in software (not software's fault really - there are good reasons for it).

When developing with C, model checking or at least fuzzing is practically mandatory, otherwise it is negligent.

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

#80

Post by epolanski »

BitsAndObjects wrote: post #30

* The fact that there are comments misunderstanding the article, that are talking about PCB Design rather than (Silicon) Chip Design, speaks to the problem facing the chip industry. Total lack of wider awareness and many misunderstandings. * Chip design pays better than software in many cases and many places (US and UK included; but excluding comparisons to Finance/FinTech software, unless you happen to be in hardwar…

Are all positions onsite for these kind of jobs?
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