Work.... What the feck do I do ...

Once in a while, somebody asks me : "What do you do for a living ?" ....

And they usually meant what do you in front of a computer, outside of tweeting and posting on Facebook....
Well my job does indeed consists of  spending loads of time in front of a computer screen.

My work station in the Irish office.

But to do what, you should ask... well for the past almost 10 years, I have been a Physical Integration Engineer. Very pompous title indeed, but basically it's one of the fundamental part in chip design.

First a bit of generic background on how electronic chips are made ( http://www.intel.com/about/companyinfo/museum/exhibits/sandtocircuits/index.htm ) :




As for my part the physical integration - or layout -, it  does the translation of  the system description in some programming language into a graphic representation (the layout) which will be used to produce the chip in the factory. Or: Chip design involves migrating a design from the logical realm (front-end design) to the
physical realm (back-end design).

The microelectronic chip are made of tiny - and getting tinier as the years passes - transistors, laid out on a silicon sheet. The process used involve photolithograhy - very similar to the development on photographic films - and used masks. Which masks I am helping creating.

An inverter and it's layout equivalent

When I started I was doing Analog Layout, so the conversion progress was highly manual, as someone put it, drawing rectangles of different colors representing the different layers ( or mask ) which were going to create the transistors and connections. Somehow i always found that it had some artistic touch, and I have to say most of the good very experienced engineers I met in that field were crazy - to some extend.
The job can also lead to some Chip Art. Sadly i have no pictures of the doodles I may or may not have inserted in past chips.

Since I moved to Digital stuff, where actually some program do layout the rectangles for you, and you're controlling those programs ( or trying to ). The idea here is to automate as much as possible the layout process, and ensuring the timing and other rules are respected.
The basic knowledge how mask design, and what are the physical impacts is still needed, but the tasks there are more programming or at least scripts writing, not too offense the software people.

Further reading on chip art:

• An interesting gallery online of these disappearing features: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/micro/gallery.html
• A IEEE Spectrum article on Chip Art:
  http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/the-secret-art-of-chip-graffiti

And on Physical Design:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_design_(electronics)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_design

Spectrum Dream Jobs 2009

Like every year in february, IEEE Spectrum, published interviews of 10 engineers who have "Dream Jobs"
Worth to have a look to see what kind of better job, you could dream doing, from creating a solar plane for an around the world trip.

Some interesting thing this year, like building electric dirt-bike.

But in my heart, still none are beating those two:

Designer for Lego Mindstorm (Dream Job 2004).
Lau Kofoed Kierstein: Playtime in the Land of Lego
What He Does: Comes up with ideas for new toys; designs toys
For Whom: Lego System A/S
Where He Does It: Billund, Denmark

Mythbuster (Dream Job 2006).
Grant Imahara (M)
What he does: Builder for the Discovery Channel's "MythBusters."
Where he does it: San Francisco.
Fun factors: Enjoys working on the eclectic "MythBusters" set, which features a motorized surfboard, a row of first-class airplane seats, and a larger-than-life rubber cast of a human rear end.
Basically blowing up stuff, in name of science... and entertainment.

Work, create, be interested....

A gardener has decided to retire... at the respectable age of 104... putting his longevity down to having "plenty to do and being interested in it". That's quite a fantastic example to follow.
Full story at BBC News.

It seems according to a recent study (BBC News again) Danish people, are the happiest people in Europe because of lower expectation or more realistic expectations. Danes (according to the study ) just take a more realistic view of life, and year after year are just simply happy that things didn't go as badly as they feared.

Is the secret of an happy life a simpler life (and avoid too high expectations) ?

That remind me of the truth told by buddhism, life is suffering because of desire (desire of renewed life)...

Also in the news the administrative court in Nice, has pronounced the expulsion of the homeless which were staying of the beach of the "Promenade".... just a question of prestige, it did not look good for the image of the city.... It's very hypocrite decision when you know that the promenade is full of working girls... but these ones are probably good for tourism.....


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Finally a bit of media:
Happy Birthday Tracks, and its ten years on the German/French TV Channel.

And don't forget from April 23 to April 29, it's Turn Off TV week... so TV couch potatoes, switch it off, go out !


I know it's a bit paradoxical, to celebrate in one hand the 10 years of a TV show ( a brilliant one) and on the other hand to incite people to switch off their TV.