Seminar Series Brings Industry Perspectives to Chip Design Students

Students in Rajit Manohar’s chip design class in fall 2024 had an opportunity to gain an inside perspective on the semiconductor business sector in a recent seminar series “Yale Engineering / Industry.”

Manohar, the John C. Malone Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science, said the lectures from visiting experts provided real-world insight for students into technical challenges, current research, and career paths in semiconductors.

“I think it’s useful for students to get perspectives from industry in this particular subject area, especially given the interest in chip design more broadly speaking,” Manohar said. Interest in the series was robust: “It’s a topic that’s in the news.”

In the inaugural semester of what will be an annual series, the seminar welcomed experts from AMD, NVIDIA, and IBM. Visiting lecturers Gabriel Loh, Matt Fojtik, and Vijay Narayanan each focused on a different aspect of semiconductors and chip design.

Gabriel Loh, a Senior Fellow at Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., acknowledged the slowing pace of progress to increase device density (a pace once thought to be predictable, formalized as Moore’s Law) and discussed a new approach of disintegrating systems on chips into multiple smaller “chiplets” as a solution.

Vijay Narayanan, a Fellow and Senior Manager at IBM, acknowledged the changing pressures on chip design and architecture driven by the growth of AI applications, and focused on new computational approaches and materials-based advances needed to address those pressures.

And Matt Fojtik, Principal Research Scientist at NVIDIA, who describes his team’s focus as “tackling problems beyond the immediate horizon,” delivered a broad overview of life as a researcher, including how the field has changed and what advice he would give his early-career self.

Those insights resonated with Thomas Jagielski, a PhD student in Electrical & Computer Engineering who attended the seminars. As a student weighing potential career paths and avenues of research, he noted that the presenters “essentially, at one point, were in the same position that I’m in now.”

“Beyond the technical details of what they’re working on now, it was interesting to hear from someone who was once in my shoes,” he said.

And in an effort to build stronger connections with local universities, students majoring in electrical engineering from Gateway Community College, University of New Haven and University of Hartford participated in the series.

Jeffrey F. Brock, Dean of Yale Engineering, said the seminar series aligned with larger efforts at Yale Engineering to develop a culture of collaboration between academia and industry.

“We’re fortunate to have forged these strong ties with industry, as it has allowed us to tap senior researchers at three of the most significant players in the field of semiconductor design to come and share their perspective and experience,” Dean Brock said.

Manohar agreed: “Faculty can provide research perspectives, and I have some industry experience so I can provide some of that, but it’s much nicer for them to hear it from somebody who is living that every day.” He added: “These people are very good at what they do.”