What comes after most semiconductor fabs are "outsourced" to Asia? Major challenges in educating future RF/analog IC designers in the U.S

Author

Lie, Donald Y C

Author_Institution

Univ. of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

fYear

2005

fDate

12-14 June 2005

Firstpage

63

Lastpage

64

Abstract

What comes after most state-of-the-art semiconductor fabs are moved to Asia? Would this trend fundamentally change the educational needs of students in the U.S. majoring in electrical engineering (E.E.)? This paper lists several major challenges for educating future RF/analog integrated circuit (IC) designers in the U.S in light of this "outsourcing" trend. The outline of a 3-quarter graduate-level RF/analog IC design series (ECE265ABC) that the author has been privileged to teach at UC San Diego (UCSD) is discussed to address some of those specific challenges.

Keywords

analogue integrated circuits; educational courses; electronic engineering education; integrated circuit design; outsourcing; radiofrequency integrated circuits; IC design education; RFIC design; analog IC design; semiconductor fab outsourcing; student educational needs; Analog integrated circuits; Asia; Bluetooth; Digital integrated circuits; GSM; Job design; Radio frequency; Radiofrequency integrated circuits; System-on-a-chip; Wireless LAN;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microelectronic Systems Education, 2005. (MSE '05). Proceedings. 2005 IEEE International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7695-2374-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MSE.2005.65

Filename

1509364