Like many creative people, Gilles Lamant, Distinguished Engineer at Cadence, has a cluttered office. But like many “crazy scientists” (his words, not mine!), he also knows what every pile contains, whether it is books, papers, Legos, hand-thrown pottery, or patents. Considering all the roles he has played in the history of Cadence, it’s no big surprise that his office strains to hold the fallout of 30 years of work. (As I have often observed, a single year in Silicon Valley is like dog years—one year equals seven years elsewhere—so Gilles has been here at Cadence for the equivalent of 210 years!)

The Timeline

Gilles (pronounced “zhill”) grew up in France, excelling early in mathematics and physics, at Lycée Michel Montaigne in Bordeaux. He said he was an “original” student, deciding to study Russian instead of English as his first second language, though his parents made him promise that English would come next in his language learning. He ended up learning both quite well, not to mention learning Japanese on the job!

He went on to study microelectronics and signal processing at Ecole Supérieure d’Ingénieurs en Electrotechnique et Electronique (ESIEE) in Paris, France, where he received his master’s degree in 1991. But Gilles’s connection with Cadence began even before he received his Engineering degree. In the summer of 1989, he was brought to Cadence in San Jose to work as an intern and in a second internship in 1990, completed his research project for his thesis (a datapath compiler for a Cadence customer in Japan). Cadence had been founded only a year before, so the internship program—and the company itself—was still in its infancy.

After receiving his degree, Gilles went to Russia for his French military service, working at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the French Embassy in Moscow. He was hired as a full-time employee by Cadence in 1993,  and moved from Russia to Burlington, Vermont, to work with the IBM teams (RF/Analog, PowerPC, ASIC) for a little over a year. In 1994, he spent some time in Dallas, Texas to prepare for another project—working with Texas Instruments in Japan—and then moved to Japan, where he lived for over eight years.

Following his stint in Japan in 2001, Gilles went back to Russia to help start the Cadence facility for R&D in Moscow. He said that his main job was to bring “Cadence culture” to the facility there. For someone who had been at Cadence for almost fifteen years at this point, Gilles was a good candidate. He also spent some time teaching analog design with Cadence tools at the Moscow Institute of Electro Technique (MIET, in Zelenograd).

Finally, in 2003, Gilles came back to San Jose and joined the R&D team and has been here ever since, working on developing new and interesting projects.

Patents, Patents Everywhere

One thing that jumped out at me when I looked at Gilles’ LinkedIn profile was his fifteen listed patents. When I asked him about them, he said, “Oh, more than that!” as he started counting the patents posted on his wall. “One, two, three, four…” as he counted up to thirteen, “And here are more that I didn’t have room for…” indicating a pile of them on the floor, “so yeah, I have a stack.”

“Many of the patents are the product of collaboration work,” he said. “There are a few I did on my own, but I think most of the patent [development work consists of] a group coming up with an idea, then some people work on it and mature it.” All it takes to get a patent is to have a good idea to solve a problem in a way that no one has done before. Some of them are very simple, very intuitive, he said, but they are key ideas that should be protected, for Cadence’s sake. “I may have some of the ideas, but to have them appear in the tool and everything, you need more than the idea. Having all those connections and people willing to embrace the ideas is kind of neat.”

Gilles’ title is now “Distinguished Engineer”. “Yeah, right!” he said, as he pointed to his shorts and sandals and gestured vaguely at his office. I asked him what his title meant. “I guess it means I have distinction?” he laughed. Evidently, it means that he falls somewhere between a “senior architect” and “Fellow”. He appreciates the seniority and having the capacity to explore new ideas with other teams at Cadence.

Sometimes you see the product coming out, and you say, well, you know, I had the idea, but the whole organization has done something that is really nice there. I think that’s part of being no longer just an architect or senior architect, but someone whose position is “Fellow” or “Distinguished Engineer” is being able to get some of those ideas to become real, using what’s in the organization, using whoever is in the organization, whoever has the resources and knowledge to do it. It takes talking with management, it takes projects dying and re-birthing because suddenly the priority changes, resources that were temporarily assigned are no longer assigned, so you have to wait three months, and then you have to re-start again because the resources are back available…

In other words, it’s more than just having great ideas, it’s having the determination to see them through, and relying on the people you work with to buy into and develop your ideas. Gilles is pleased with the trend recently to invest in R&D. “[Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Cadence] understands that a very strong part of the value proposition of the company comes from the technical people who make the product.”

When Gilles Is Not at Work

Gilles is a single dad of 8-year-old twins, so when I asked him what he does in his spare time, he laughed. “I don’t have much spare time,” he said. “Lego, lots of Lego…” he trailed off.

This is another example of Gilles reinventing himself. Before kids, he used to throw pottery, and even has a pottery studio in his garage—he showed me his lovely hand-thrown mug—but he doesn’t throw much anymore.

However, both he and his kids are working on learning the piano; he played for sixteen years when he was growing up. Gilles and his boys spend at least half an hour at the keyboard every day. “But I can’t teach them,” he said. “There is no way a dad can teach their kids piano. It doesn’t work. I can barely sit five minutes with them at the keyboard. And that usually ends up in a catastrophe, with one of us leaving!”

Photonics

Photonics is the branch of technology concerned with the properties and transmission of photons—that is, light—for example, in fiber optics. Silicon photonics is an active area of research, and that is the type of research that Gilles is currently involved with. When I asked him about some of the applications that silicon photonics can be applied to, he said,

Lidar, cars, military applications, biomedical, sensors… but if you really want to see those, come to the Photonics Summit, because typically, the first day of the summit is people presenting on what they’re doing in photonics.

The Photonics Summit will be held November 13th at Cadence HQ. Save the date and stay tuned for more details about the summit nearer the time.

Laser diodes

Gilles has two interns working for him right now, one doing some basic coding and the other helping to organize the summit. Having these interns rounds the circle nicely, as Gilles started his career as an intern and worked his way into a 30-year career at Cadence.

Interns, take notice! This may be more than just a summer job!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

Gilles has worked in the service organization, he has been in R&D, he has been a manager, he’s been an individual contributor, he has taught classes and workshops and has worked all over the world. He said,

I think Cadence is a unique place, in terms of having the possibility to do different things, in different geographies—I was in the west coast, the east coast, Russia, Japan, and I was in the service organization, R&D, and even in R&D I did very very different things—some pure execution stuff, creation stuff, new products... That may not be easy for everybody because it takes being willing to put yourself on the spot and change. I think that is something unique to Cadence.

I see a lot of people who want to change, and they change companies. I think I was lucky to be able to change many times without having to change company… That is possible at Cadence.

This continuity—and changes—have served Gilles well, and Cadence has benefited from his longevity and institutional knowledge.

—Meera