FPGA, CPLD in Egypt ?!

[amraldo]

AA,
Can somebody answer these question for me? How many egyptians participating in projects on sourceforge.net & opencores.org? Why when we talk abut advance we talk about companies? Why do not we Egyptians have our open souce community, ideas, projects, ...?

Regards,
Amraldo.

 

[omara007]

AA,
Can somebody answer these question for me? How many egyptians participating in projects on sourceforge.net & opencores.org? Why when we talk abut advance we talk about companies? Why do not we Egyptians have our open souce community, ideas, projects, ...?

Regards,
Amraldo.

Dear amraldo

There are many projects being published on those websites by egyptians .. Although this is considered a good step towords the good work, yet it's not professional enough .. and it's not enough for egypt .. and it's less than expected from a country as huge as egypt.

You need to have a professional work .. not amateur work .. in order to build your technology community ..

For your second question .. be informed that there is an arabic open-souce community called Handasarabia.org .. and I was one of the team who turned later to be the core team of Handasarabia (the group formerly called Tech-3al).

There are some good steps as i just said .. but we need to have everything professionial .. at the same time we shouldn't say it will come by time .. as already we started the design business in egypt around 12 to 15 years ago .. we should have been where india stands now ..

 

[amraldo]

AA,
When you spoke about professionality, did u mean individuals or companies or you were talking about the idea of participating in such projects?

Regards,
Amraldo.

 

[omara007]

Professional work implies the follows :
1- Professional Design Flow
2- Professional Tools
3- Professional Project Plan to get something out (management).
4- a Product that works.


Among all the inputs needed to get something out, we have the mentality .. we have the person .. we have the mind .. but we have troubles in the remaining stuff.

 

[han00oo]

Assalamou Alaikum,
i see this starts with a frustrated one who blames the country for his mistake..yes his mistake for lack of searching , i countered exactly the same problem in finding FPGA board here in Egypt but I've found lot of providers..for example the one posted here GUIDE , another one i don't remember the name in Salah Salem st. Omarat el Oboor ,....& even if you don't find what you want (also i doubt) why not buying online it's more cheap(am sure of this) & would deliver it to your place.

all this talk about development of design technology in Egypt is great i really admire it but can anyone suggest a method for implementing this things in real life, something we can start from & why don't we start from here from EDA & participating in a project of this kind i think there's alot of Egyptians designers found here in the forum if united would make a great work.

Regards,

Hany Hamed

 

[omara007]

Assalamou Alaikum,
i see this starts with a frustrated one who blames the country for his mistake..yes his mistake for lack of searching , i countered exactly the same problem in finding FPGA board here in Egypt but I've found lot of providers..for example the one posted here GUIDE , another one i don't remember the name in Salah Salem st. Omarat el Oboor ,....& even if you don't find what you want (also i doubt) why not buying online it's more cheap(am sure of this) & would deliver it to your place.

all this talk about development of design technology in Egypt is great i really admire it but can anyone suggest a method for implementing this things in real life, something we can start from & why don't we start from here from EDA & participating in a project of this kind i think there's alot of Egyptians designers found here in the forum if united would make a great work.

Regards,

Hany Hamed

Dear hany

Don't blame the guy for not being able to locate a place to buy an FPGA board from .. and remember, not all of us do have access to online shopping .. you can't deal with people like this ..

For the technology in Egypt .. I suggest you try to be more open to the professional work that occurs internationally .. try to see why some companies failed in-land .. talk to those who saw the failure .. and ask them why ..

Try to break the "Product" barrier and deliver some output to the end .. can you ? .. if you can't .. then ask how .. and search .. and if you know, tell others .. etc.

 

[Abu-Abdullah]

omara007 wrote:

For Egypt, the problem we are facing is definetly managerial .. not any technical .. there is a problem about leading people to know and to do the right thing ..

I did not say the problem is technical.. Please read my post again. You were arguing, if I understood you correctly, that our designers need to have a full-chip experience. I said the problem is "the market". No one builds a business that has no market for its product and expects it to succeed. In Egypt, you have no market for a full chip. We can not get to that market outside until we prove ourselves on the smaller pieces and that is what the other poster was claiming those start-ups are doing and you yourself said you are trying to do by going into design services. No one will assign you a full-chip until they see how you perform well on a small block and until it makes more sense for their business (which does not for the most part for now). As far as management, it is an acquired and developed experience as well.

From your nickname , it appears to me that you are either arab or at least Moslim ..

I am indeed Moslim and Arab but, incidentally, I am also 100% Egyptian. Not that this has anything to do with this discussion.

definetly you know that Egypt is the arab leader in everything .. hence, we can't say it's way behind the countries ..

I would argue against that but that is not the point. The point is what does it matter who is leading who. Let me just talk about industry and technology, all Arab countries are now at the bottom of the list. I find it difficult to believe that some people still do not realize how bad our condition is. Please do not reply to this point because I do not want to get into this kind of discussion.

Now .. I'm back to Egypt, and I'm still not even 30 years old .. trying to participate in opening (what you called) a small design service center ...
I have a network of people in both far east and far west .. and europe ..
Again .. I insist on the management .. we need to manage people to know what should be known .. starting from Univeristy up to the company .. and Inshallah this will be the next challenge that we will succeed in ..
Wish us luck ..

I do wish you the best from the bottom of my heart... but it has nothing to do with luck.. It is hard work, innovation and as you said it, professionalism in every aspect of our thinking, research, execution and dealings with others. And before all, tawfeeq from the Almighty. May He (swt) guide you all to success.



For the other poster (amraldo), let me give you my two cents on the topic. If it does not seek to generate wealth, it will not survive.

In other words, if it is not a business that brings in money and allow you to survive and flourish, inevitably, you will get busy with real life and its needs and not continue it. In the west, people are working hard, and I mean 16hrs a day 6 days a week during crunch time, because they earn money and they grow with these businesses. You may get the 0.01% population that give you all kind of GNU stuff but they are either in a similar business or trying to make a business out of it. Then, there is the concept of "productization". None of these shareware or sharecores is suitable for a product as-is and it is a long process to make it a product that can bring in money to sustain its developer. My humble opinion.

-AA

 

[omara007]

I did not say the problem is technical.. Please read my post again. You were arguing, if I understood you correctly, that our designers need to have a full-chip experience. I said the problem is "the market". No one builds a business that has no market for its product and expects it to succeed. In Egypt, you have no market for a full chip. We can not get to that market outside until we prove ourselves on the smaller pieces and that is what the other poster was claiming those start-ups are doing and you yourself said you are trying to do by going into design services. No one will assign you a full-chip until they see how you perform well on a small block and until it makes more sense for their business (which does not for the most part for now). As far as management, it is an acquired and developed experience as well.

I still insist on that we need our designers to have the full chip experience .. or at least to know exactly how the full chip can be done professionally .. this is absent.

For the market point, why do you want a local market ?
Services are always done for US or Europe .. but still, services need you to know the full chip design flow .. no one takes an IP from you unless you silicon-prove it's working. If you don't know the complete design flow, you will just target a small piece of the market (say System Level market).

Your professional work will open markets for you.

About proving ourselves in small pieces .. I mentioned in a previouse post that we started the design era in Egypt around 15 years ago :!: .. for how long, then, are we going to keep proving ouselves in small pieces :?:
Small pieces themselves needs to be silicon proved !


P.S. almost 100% of the service companies openning in Egypt are targetting US and Europe. The founders of these companies are either forigners or former egyptians living abroad. Marketing is completely a piece of cake if you can demo your design professionally. I myself have worked as a marketing engineer in a design center in California. Once you show the guys something jumping, they start thinking seriousely.

Making it clear, services also need us to master the professional flow. Be able to prove our design.

Let me just talk about industry and technology, all Arab countries are now at the bottom of the list. I find it difficult to believe that some people still do not realize how bad our condition is. Please do not reply to this point because I do not want to get into this kind of discussion.

Sorry .. I will reply .. but not argument .. I will state something :
Egypt ranked number 12 worldwide among leading countries in ICT outsourcing in the domain, and ranked first among the new entrants this year.

By the way, Jordan is No. 14 I guess ..

This ranking is internationally done by AT Kearney.

I do wish you the best from the bottom of my heart... but it has nothing to do with luck.. It is hard work, innovation and as you said it, professionalism in every aspect of our thinking, research, execution and dealings with others. And before all, tawfeeq from the Almighty. May He (swt) guide you all to success.

True .. and thanks.

 

[safwatonline]

AA,
i am starting to like this topic ,

I still insist on that we need our designers to have the full chip experience .. or at least to know exactly how the full chip can be done professionally .. this is absent.

i dont know why r u insisting on the full chip thing , as i told u i know that at laest SWS already did that , and i think that SysDsoft already done tapeout and i even heard "but not sure" that it worked after manufacture form the first trial, anyway i did notice that u r focusing on the million transistor ICs which i think r not the right thing to do now , digital design is really advanced now and i think that we should focus on analog and mixed design not a multi- million IC.

For the market point, why do you want a local market ?
Services are always done for US or Europe .. but still, services need you to know the full chip design flow .. no one takes an IP from you unless you silicon-prove it's working. If you don't know the complete design flow, you will just target a small piece of the market (say System Level market).

i dont agree with that cause as far as i know poeple abraod r stating to have trust in Egyptian companies and i can tell u that some times there are more work to do in a company like SWS bigger than the company can do "not enough engineers" so i think that the market is OK , and i think that u already stated in ur post the ranking of Egypt in ICT outsourcing which i think is impressive for a nearly 3 years or something start in the field , and above that WORK brings WORK , so if we succeed in doing projects , it attracts other bigger projects so i dont think finding projects is difficult except at the start where u need strong connections to get some projects to start with, and as Abu-Abdullah said no one starts in full chip design they start with design services to get customers and gain experience then move to IP and finally they will have their own product which i think is the natural flow.

Let me just talk about industry and technology, all Arab countries are now at the bottom of the list. I find it difficult to believe that some people still do not realize how bad our condition is. Please do not reply to this point because I do not want to get into this kind of discussion.

i dont agree and i think will as omara said are very fast developing

 

[khouly]

we need to fouc in every asspect in microelectronic

multimillion , Analog , Mixed Signal , RFIC , microwave

we have the minds , we have littile companies , and we still developing

khouly

 

[omara007]

Dear Safwat ..

You information are not correct in all what you said ..

SWS didn't tape out using its local engineers ..
SysDSoft is system oriented and they don't usually tape out ..

You are free not to agree with my point of view ... yet, u need to be accurate in the information u supply .. we started the design not only 3 years ago .. we have been in this since early 90's .. and even Ellipsis Digital Systems and MEMSCap went out of business like 3 years ago .. after working around a similar period ..

I never heard of a company taping out a real product that was sold in the market, and was completely designed in Egypt.
Please supply accurate information, not just guessings .. in case u have.

 

[husseinadel]

Dear Safwat ..

You information are not correct in all what you said ..

SWS didn't tape out using its local engineers ..
SysDSoft is system oriented and they don't usually tape out ..

You are free not to agree with my point of view ... yet, u need to be accurate in the information u supply .. we started the design not only 3 years ago .. we have been in this since early 90's .. and even Ellipsis Digital Systems and MEMSCap went out of business like 3 years ago .. after working around a similar period ..

I never heard of a company taping out a real product that was sold in the market, and was completely designed in Egypt.
Please supply accurate information, not just guessings .. in case u have.

Dear omara

well, i am just graduated and employed in SWS, and i have a lot of friends working in the IC field in egypt,,, from your informations, it seems that you got it from un-trusted sources, or you just guess, so i will borrow your words about supplying accurate informations, and not just guessing, what i will say now will be accompanied by the percentage of being sure;

1- SWS makes Tape out (sure 100 %; i see the poster which states the time of start and time of tape-out), and i think with above 90% that it was all done using the local egyptian engineers, and if there is a foriegner contribution, it might be very limited and not in the core of the design,, i will ask about this to raise the percentage to 100% , but what i am sure of, that the engineers in SWS all have the complete tape out experience,

2- SYSDSOFT SURE 100% that they work in transistor level, and i am so astonished that you said they are system oriented only, and this makes me wonder if your informations are up-to-date, the head of the IC design team is Dr. Emad Hegazi, and if you know him well, you might be sure that he must work in the transistor level , he is a great designer , and i didnt think at all that he just work on the system level; i know some that work there, three of them working as TAs in ASU, and i discuss a lot of things with them concerning cadence and analog/RF design, and i heard but not sure that they also tape-out ,anyway, if you dont beleive , got to there site and you will find that they did things with 90nm technology.

3-Mentor IP; i didnt know well their work , but i think they work well in developing there IPs,

these companies i know well enough to give the above informations, and if you want to know more ,ask me ,and i will tell isa, you know , the IC design field main resource is the good designers, and from my little experience, i beleive that EGYPT has a lot of incredible. outstanding minds, well , what i aimed from my post to give facts , and if you are an IC designer , it gives me all pleasure to see you in one of the above companies, i beleive that we can do something great to this lovely country; EGYPT,really . it deserves the best,,,, Germany after the world war II, was completely destroyed, and most of its mans were either killed or captured, this happens from 61 years, now how is Germany?!!
,pleased to meet you in this forum,
by the way , safwat works with me isa in SWS, and so, i will borrow his words; EGYPT RULES

Hussein

 

[omara007]

Dear Hussein

Let me first express my gladness for your reply. I do really see it extremely reasonable and beautifully ordered.

I would appreciate if you give me the chance to comment on what you said:

1- For SWS .. if you want to know who did the backend, PM me ..

2- For SysDSoft .. you are true .. I am the one who wasn't clear enough this time .. when I was talking about SysDSoft, I was completely biased to Digital ..
I know Dr. Emad Hegazy pretty well .. and I know his work with Asad Abidi ..
Probably he knows me as well .. and knows where I work ..
I completely have no doubt that those transistor level guys are doing good job .. again .. I was biased to digital when I was talking.

3- All my previous posts didn't mean that all the good work happening in Egypt is garbage .. at all .. I wanted to state 2 points : It's not professional enough, and the number of companies itself is not enough.

Not professional enough means we don't have an engineer for every position .. we are concentrating on some design phases and ignoring some others ..

When talking about digital for example, I can say that we are HDL oriented ..
How many designers you know are working just as verification engineers .. dealing with Vera or E ?
How many engineers you know are working just as Synthesis/DFT/STA/Formal Verification engineers ?
What is the most famous synthesis tool that we are using ?


These questions should be answered to know the situation .. and once we knew it, we can change it to a better one .. and so on ..

 

[salma ali bakr]

salamo alikom all,

i'm extremely happy to see this discussion here on the board and i feel we need to start being more positive and proactive in "having an engineer for every position"....and in being "more professional"

why don't some of the professional and experienced guys around here tell us what positions are needed exactly and with what qualifications...so that people like me-freshers and beginners- would benefit and start on the road of Professionalism

thanks and best regards to all,
Salma

 

[omara007]

salamo alikom all,

i'm extremely happy to see this discussion here on the board and i feel we need to start being more positive and proactive in "having an engineer for every position"....and in being "more professional"

why don't some of the professional and experienced guys around here tell us what positions are needed exactly and with what qualifications...so that people like me-freshers and beginners- would benefit and start on the road of Professionalism

thanks and best regards to all,
Salma

The best way to do so is to comprehensively explain the design flow .. then, the jobs in the flow will show how many different engineers we need.

 

[salma ali bakr]

salamo alikom all,

well,i know the design flow...but i don't think that i know every position needed...i know what should be done...but not HOW exactly it is done and WHO should do it and WHAT skills and tools should this person master to do it optimally...after all, you guys mentioned that not all companies here have all the positions...so there are definitely some missing data for most of us about the required posts in an A1 company that really gives a final product, wholly by its engineers from A to Z...so, someone with hands-on experience would surely know better...hey, we're here to learn and benefit from each other and no shame in saying: I DON'T KNOW

so for me, I'm personally interested in digital design
let's start by that

thanks in advance,
Salma

 

[omara007]

The design flow differs from one company to the other .. smotly due to reasons like the reusability, configurability, the nature of the business itself (service, product, etc.), the size of the design .. etc.

The best place to find design flows in is the fab .. and the EDA vendor .. you can go to TSMC and find their design flow linked to Synopsys or Cadence .. and you can for example go to MAGMA and see their design flow with UMC ..

In this design flow you will find a definition for every single step in the design since the very begining till the GDSII generation with all the jobs listed .. This way you will have a complete picture and decide where you can fit or where you want to place yourself ..

 

[salma ali bakr]

thanks alot mohamad

i didn't know that piece of info...about getting the design flow exactly from the Fab itself...thanks alot...now i know that i have a reference at least to refer to...and place myself where i'm capable of proofing myself

best regards,
Salma

 

[coshkun]

It seems that you have a big industry on chip design in Egypt.I hope one day we will have too in Turkey:|

 

[haytham]

Hi Omara
You are saying that Sysdsoft are system level and they are rarly doing tapeouts. I don't know where you got your info from. As far as I know, in thier first year, they did about 2 or 3 tapeouts.

Also you said that Mentor IP team is not a design team and they never went to silicicon. Also, I don't know where you got your info from. May be you are not updated enough to claim that.
What do you know about Mentor USB team and Sedes team here in Egypt. What do you know about the number of tapeouts they made. Also what do you know about the Digital design team and their focus in the next period.

Also you said about SWS that their tapeout are done with aid of some people outside SWS. What is the shame in doing that. At least they did it and they had trained their engineers to do this in the next time.

These words are to clear the facts (from my point of view) that seems to be not clear for all the people here.
I do beleive that IC industry is growing in Egypt in a reasonable rate.

Thanks
Haytham