Cadence Academic Network Asia

I sat down with Tracy Zhu to find out about the academic network in Asia Pacific. I'm based in San Jose, and she is based in Shanghai, so the obvious place to meet is...a biergarten in Munich!

She joined a year ago from running an academic program for IBM. She covers a big area with China and Taiwan being the most important, but Korea, too. She works with the Singapore office that covers not just Singapore itself but also Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Australia. She also covers Japan, since there is no one on the team based there.

In Asia, the academic program is relatively new. University accounts are covered by the sales team in each country, as if they were a commercial account, which is different from how we operate the academic program in Europe and North America.

China

In China, the government has top-down programs since semiconductor and its associated ecosystem is seen as strategically important at a national level. Most well-known is that the Chinese government and some of the provincial governments have committed upwards of $100B to increase the self-sufficiency of China in semiconductor. It is an incredible statistic, but China imports a higher dollar value of semiconductors than oil (to be fair, they re-export a lot of those semiconductors inside final product, but only a little of the oil is used for export industries). Of course, only a little of that money is earmarked for education. A lot is targeted at XMC, SMIC, and GF's Chengdu fab, and similar commercial enterprises. However, there is a target to train 150,000 professionals in microelectronics over the next five years.

In fact, this requires China universities to educate students to know how to do IC design and how to use EDA products, and involve them in all kinds of research projects. The Jesuit priest Francis Xavier (maybe) said, "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man." The university program doesn't go quite that far, but it is clearly good for Cadence for engineers to be educated on the use of Cadence tools while they are still students.

The result of these initiatives is that some money is directed top down to top-tier universities, and then to microelectronics schools. Other money is more bottom up. Tracy described it to me as "there is never a lack of projects" in the hot areas like deep learning, EDA, and semiconductor. Some professors are doing the sort of research where Cadence R&D is interested in co-operation. Other professors are not doing semiconductor or EDA research but are training students. It is obviously to Cadence's advantage if all the graduates that we and our customers hire are already familiar with the Cadence tools.

In practice, the academic network works with key professors, and the top-down dynamic is managed by the sales team. Sometimes, professors are just interested in their own research and teaching, and are not involved in what their university will purchase as a whole, and others are more senior and only concerned with institution-wide decisions.

The China Ministry of Education is the driver of a national program for research and education in electronics. So far, a total 26 universities have been approved in China. And the nine top universities for microelectronics are Peking University, Tsinghua University, and China Academy of Sciences, all in Beiing; Sudan University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, both in Shanghai; Zhe Jiang University in Hangzhou; UESTC in Chengdu; Southeast University in  Nanjing; and Xidian University in Xi’an. Not only are these schools inherently important, they are also strongly connected to the policy and programs of the China government. For almost anything that happens, some of these nine universities are sure to be involved. Key professors tend to be consultants to government officials on future plans, funding, and talent.

Taiwan

The most advanced region from the point of view of an established academic network working closely with Cadence is Taiwan. It can serve as a role model for other regions. For example, in Taiwan, the Cadence academic network has 328 professors/faculty using Cadence tools. We have not just sales, but also R&D in Taiwan, so co-operation can be handled locally.

The top universities in Taiwan for microelectronics are the National University of Taiwan in Taipei, and National Chiao-Tung University and National Tsing Hua University, both in Hsinchu. 

Supporting Professors

One challenge is supporting professors. Using Cadence tools can be a steep learning curve. Designing an advanced SoC, for example, requires a deep understanding of a lot of silicon effects and how to use the tools to mitigate problems and optimize PPA. Our goal is make the professors successful by using our online support model and leveraging our online resources for teaching.

Sometimes Cadence tools are used for mainline teaching, such as SystemVerilog simulation for RTL design courses. But Tracy thinks it would be good to have a certification program for students that the industry would value and recognize, in a similar way to some of the Microsoft product certification that IT departments require. Obviously, this would need to piggy-back on something Cadence was providing as part of its training, not something special that the academic network could create and support with its limited resources.

Ten-Year Anniversary

This may be roughly Tracy's one-year anniversary running the academic program in Asia Pacific. But 2017 is the ten-year anniversary of the academic program as a whole, which actually started in Europe.

I will write about this in more detail late in the summer.

More information is on the Cadence Academic Network page on the website.