Years of experience in IC-level analog design

How many years of hands-on experience in chip-level analog design do you have?
Years of study in colledge, university, school do not count, unless you worked at the same time.
Also, I mean years of actual IC-level design, not board level or other similar but not same experience.
On the other hand, time spend in chip layout counts, as it's more relevant.

Nice idea.

did you statistic it for what?

cetc1525 said:

did you statistic it for what?

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Well, no particular reason, other than curiosity.

I think who have more than ten years experience can give us some advice.

Analoge design is avery hard work
i Think that experiance do abig role in make a good analoge design
SZ

bear7679 said:

I think who have more than ten years experience can give us some advice.

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I'm risking to be controversial, but I believe 5-6 years of experience is a "sweet spot" for analog designer.
10 years leaves a lot of useless luggage in designer's head, that not everybody can leave behind.

Look what was "modern" 10 years ago:

- 5V was considered low voltage design, 9V was used for high performance circuits
- Sigma-delta was in its infancy, just a handful of companies knew how to build 5th order modulator
- Dynamic matching was hot-new
- Switched cap was considered mainstream
- Folding and interpolation ADCs were hot topic
- Self calibration and digital correction of analog errors were in pubescent state (real time LMS and such)

What knowledge is relevant now:

- 1V supply is common, the most advanced move to 0.7V. This thing alone virtually puts design techniques upside down
- Gate leakage is the biggest challange requiring new approaches
- Low-k dielectric has its own pecularities, problems and solutions
- SOI with its own set of problebs slowly approaches mainstream
- CMOS RF is common these days
- 40G circuits have its own challenges
- wide availability of mixed-signal simulators allows new sophisticated ways of digital corrections of analog errors

All in all, 10-15 year old experience is about as relevant now, as stem engine experience in internal conbustion engine time. I'd say only last 5 years of experience are useful.


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1 year exp

I don't agree with you steer , Analog designer comes better with time.And I'm not sure 10 years ago lot of people worked at 5 volts (maybe 15 years ago yes).
B.Gilbert is one of better designer in the world and sure you can learn a lot reading stuff from hin , published 10 or 20 years ago.

Yes, I agree that challanges 10 years ago were vastly different from the ones now.
And if you take an analog designer who worked then he will be probably no worth now if that guy didn't work for the last 5-10 years. But I can't agree that a person who has worked all the time during the past 10 years has his mind cluttered with old stuff. On the contrary, such a person has gone through all the generations and followed the development of technology. He knows how the designing was at that time, he surely can do it now. At least I know several people like this. There is also something else, based on my experience. People that are just out of the university or have 2-3 years of experience have a lot of knowledge in their heads, which most of the time is an obstacle for seeing clearly things, especially in analog design. A person with 10-15 years real experience may not remember the formulas from school, but he has developed an intuition, a gut feeling about circuits and systems. Which one is more valuable? Well, I leave it for each one of you to decide for him/herself.

raymond33 said:

I don't agree with you steer , Analog designer comes better with time.And I'm not sure 10 years ago lot of people worked at 5 volts (maybe 15 years ago yes).
B.Gilbert is one of better designer in the world and sure you can learn a lot reading stuff from hin , published 10 or 20 years ago.

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If my memory serves me, 10 years ago the top line process was 0.5-0.6um, right? This is 5V process. Analog usually trails to digital in supply voltage. Many analog designs were sigle supply 9-12V or dual supply +/-5V those days.

As for Barry Gilbert, yes, we can learn a lot from him. However, Barry missed analog CMOS revolution. Basically, he is one of the kings of analog style of 1970s.

Added after 6 minutes:

sutapanaki said:

Yes, I agree that challanges 10 years ago were vastly different from the ones now.
And if you take an analog designer who worked then he will be probably no worth now if that guy didn't work for the last 5-10 years. But I can't agree that a person who has worked all the time during the past 10 years has his mind cluttered with old stuff.
-snip-
A person with 10-15 years real experience may not remember the formulas from school, but he has developed an intuition, a gut feeling about circuits and systems. Which one is more valuable? Well, I leave it for each one of you to decide for him/herself.

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I agree, if a designer learns all the time, he remains competitive. One problem I see far too often is that people do not learn. True, there are some exceptions, but many 10-15 year experienced designers use their old techniques, even when they are completely inappropriate. And they miss newer, much more effective ways developed in the recent years.

I have quite 10 years experience now and I haven't forget nothing about formulas from and more...
My feeling is with time analog designer become better.
Sorry ten years ago the technologys was 0.5 um but at 3 Volts not 5 Volts....and plenty of 80s ends articles on low voltage stay very good for low voltage ....

Definitely a ten years experinced person who is doing now is worthy, as he managed every thing with the old cumbersome tolos and he will be able to solve the problem with the modern tools with in notime provided he is willing to learn always and an enthu.

Maybe I am not a very good designer but I can fell that I become stronger than before year by year
because the project and process will change and I need to do more also.

I have 6 years experience in IC design. The analog design is similar to the past. But only less people interested on it. Most of the people goto digital design

OK guys, you convinced me. 10-15 years is not that bad.
So when a roll-off of designer's capabilities begins? After 20 years of work? 25 years? 30?
Do you think that analog designer with 45 years of experience is better than one with 5 years?
I mean in average. Barry Gilbert and Bob Widlar are just exceptions, but what is the rule?

I don't know what the rule is but I have a friend and a colleague who has about 25 years of experience. Have to tell you that he is still doing amazing designs and I have rarely seen some one who can match him.

1+ year experience

Steer, how many years of experience do you have? I am in this field from 1999 ( 2 years in college + 5.5 years of work exp). I think I have done good work in my field in rolling out chips for many applications ranging from audio codecs, power, video, filtering, PCI applications, etc. But I still learn from a staff or a principal designer. There are so many issues about interfacing, ESD, IO and signal integrity, which you will understand as the time goes. I do not mean to sound offensive but "Do not underestimate the experience of the seniors".

3+ year