Viewpoint: The pressures on Integrated Circuit designers
Author: EIS Release Date: Oct 11, 2022
“How do Integrated Circuit designers cope with increasing demands while maintaining a good work-life balance?” asks WIMMIC’s Technical Director, Ash Madni.
If you feel like me in the above picture, don’t worry, we are not alone. In today’s commercial world of tight deadlines, technology nodes shrinking while silicon costs go up and the need to achieve right first time silicon, all place significant pressure on designers.
To maximise our performance and to stay sharp not only requires honing our technical skills, but also how we look after our physical and mental health. Countless studies on stress show that our performance degrades under stress, the one factor that is not likely to recede in the future. So how do we cope with increasing demands on us while maintaining a good work life balance?
Results
Let’s begin by some self-honesty. We force ourselves to work beyond exhaustion partially for fear of failure and of being seen as uncommitted to the project amongst our peers. In the case of the former, no one wants to shoulder the burden of an unsuccessful company, consequently some of us self-confine ourselves until we achieve the result we desire.
“Its 9 pm and my sims results are non-specification compliant. I’ve got to keep working.” The clock ticks away and before we know it, its 2am in the morning and we are still hard at it. Exhausted we plough on relentless.
How we rank ourselves against our peers depends very much on the individual. We all do it, but the level of self-honesty varies from person to person. We all want to think of ourselves as just as good as our peers and certainly not “slow” or “lazy”.
“John is really good. He’s finished the Mixer design and now is moving on to the TIA. I’m miles behind compared to him and I’ve so much to do. John must think I’m rubbish.”
Personally, I think self-pressure is by far the greatest source of stress.
In my mind, such behaviour is no different in principle to track athletes. A sprinter is focused on achieving the fastest lap time possible, and will train very hard to achieve this. By comparison, a designer would be driven to complete her/his design, meeting or beating specifications, inside their allocated time with full documentation and intimate knowledge of all the limitations. This means a full understanding of circuit performance over process, voltage and temperature as well as Monte Carlo.
The difference between us and track athletes is that while they train hard, they are equally focused on rest and recuperation. In other words, the track athletes “switch off” during their training. In our case, we begin the day and end the day tired because we haven’t “switched-off” during our down time.
We could incorporate a number of strategies of how to manage our stress levels, before and leading up to tapeout.
Heroes
Harriet Green
One of my heroes, Harriet Green (right), who needs no introduction, says:
“Chunk out the work interspersed with 20 min breaks to stretch and drink water!”
So Harriet’s strategy is to build in regular breaks in the working day to stretch and drink water for managing stress levels. In case you haven’t heard of Harriet Green, simply look her up on Wikipedia and be amazed!
Another hero of mine, Andrew Beckett, and in my opinion the best EDA FAE in the world, says:
“When I get stuck on a task and am struggling to make progress on solving a problem, I stop working on it and do something totally different for a while. That could be some simpler activity on the project, or going for a walk or riding my bike. It’s amazing how often the solution comes to you when you’re not actively thinking about it and have given yourself a chance to breathe!”
So Andrew moves on to a different task or takes a break, rather than toiling away at the same problem.
I have the pleasure of serving as the Technical Director of a lovely Spanish company called WIMMIC. Headquartered in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria,
WIMMIC is managed by our CEO Gerardo Morales. Gerardo is an entrepreneur but unlike other CEOs, he is very personable and down to earth. When I asked him recently how he copes with stress, his answer was exercise and meditation.
Now there is an interesting word, “meditation”. What does that even mean? Sounds like mumbo jumbo, and it conjures up images of people practising Tai Chi in a garden. Believe it or not, numerous studies have shown that meditation is a powerful stress management tool. So what is meditation?
Meditation
Meditation teaches us to observe the mental patterns that cause stress in a detached way, so that we are able to become less affected by it. Rather like watching a volcano erupt from a distance whilst staying safe. I know that sounds crazy, but let’s take a step back and begin to explore how to meditate.
There are a number of techniques but the best one I was taught was this. Lie on a carpeted floor with some support for neck and lower back. Closing our eyes, we inhale deeply from our nose, hold our breath and then exhale through our mouth. We focus our minds on breathing and here is the trick, we let the floor take our weight. The first time I heard that, I laughed out loud. To my surprise however, when I did let the floor take my weight over a short period of a few minutes, I felt deeply relaxed. During this time, I effectively managed to slow my mental processes and I was able to observe my stress factors without getting carried away by them.
It was like watching myself driving in dense traffic but being detached emotionally. To my surprise, I was able to explore all my options calmly and with ease.
Exercise
Exercise is another tool to aid relaxation. A good friend of mine and a brilliant power amplifier designer, Thierry Favard, runs every day. As well as being super fit, he has found a way to be extremely efficient while staying calm and relatively stress free. During my tenure at a UK startup, I had the pleasure of working with Thierry and I was amazed at how he managed to keep the edge in a relaxed way.
Over coffee or lunch, we would discuss the design challenges of the day and he never gave me the impression he fell behind in his tasks or that he hadn’t understood the mechanisms of circuit behaviour inhibiting performance. He was the only designer in the team that really impressed me.
Now I have to confess, I am no athlete like Thierry, but I wanted to take a leaf out of his book. Consequently I have added calisthenics, weight training, at the beginning of my day, then at lunch time, a full hour walk, and at the end of the day meditation.
So pulling this all together, we need to add regular exercise and meditation as good daily stress coping mechanisms if we are going to perform at our best consistently and continue our quest for the holy grail of design excellence and meet or beat tapeout schedules.
Author
A veteran of 31 years in the Analog Integrated Circuit industry, Ash Madni continues to contribute to the rapidly changing world of Microelectronics.
He has worked for a number of big companies, such as Ferranti, STL, GEC Plessey Semiconductors, Maxim Integrated, Dialog Semiconductors, to name a few. He has also worked in startups, such as Phyworks.
During his tenure at GEC Plessey Semiconductors, Ash raised over 20 patents, including Synthesis Exploiting Algebraic Design, which was used successfully in a number of products.
Ash is currently the Technical Director of a Spanish start-up WIMMIC, head quartered in Las Palmas, Grand Canaria. He manages all technical activities of the three teams in the UK, Las Palmas and mainland Spain
For relaxation he enjoys walking and spending time with his wife, daughters and grandchildren. He is also active as a composer and has started his first Sci-Fi horror novel Transmutation – the rise of Hemonra.