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[rkbabang]

Funny story about playing music.  I'm a chip designer and the small group I was a member of in the late 90s was half in New England and half the people in Texas.

This was inside of a very large US company, which is now a Fortune 500 company.  Anyway the Texas half of the group had this idea that only musicians made good engineers, so whenever they interviewed anyone they would casually ask if they played any instruments and would only hire people who did.  Word eventually got out that they were doing this and they were ordered quite strongly to stop it.

 

Was it AMD?

 

No.  I still work at the company (or rather I should say, I now work there again), so I'd rather not say.  Ticker does start with an A though.  Followed by a D and an I.  That team in Texas that was doing this no longer exists though, they didn't survive the 2000 crash.

 

Oh, so you're an analog engineer. Nice. We should talk about that at some point. Also interesting how management in the space seems to be pretty rational about capital allocation..

 

Ha, that's a reasonable guess but no.  I'm actually a digital design engineer who has always worked at analog companies.  It's a small niche I've gotten into which has worked out very well for me over the years.  It is actually hard to find digital guys with experience working on big-analog, little digital mixed signal chips.  When you are the only digital guy working on a chip, you have to do everything from systems design, to RTL, to DFT, to all implementation and verification.  When you talk to digital engineers from big digital companies they specialize in one or two narrow areas and don't have experience with the whole design process and tools from front to back.

 

[Liberty]

Ha, that's a reasonable guess but no.  I'm actually a digital design engineer who has always worked at analog companies.  It's a small niche I've gotten into which has worked out very well for me over the years.  It is actually hard to find digital guys with experience working on big-analog, little digital mixed signal chips.  When you are the only digital guy working on a chip, you have to do everything from systems design, to RTL, to DFT, to all implementation and verification.  When you talk to digital engineers from big digital companies they specialize in one or two narrow areas and don't have experience with the whole design process and tools from front to back.

 

That's cool. I won't ask about your company just in case that could get you in trouble, but I'm curious to know what you think of the closest analog (bad pun), TXN?

[rkbabang]

Ha, that's a reasonable guess but no.  I'm actually a digital design engineer who has always worked at analog companies.  It's a small niche I've gotten into which has worked out very well for me over the years.  It is actually hard to find digital guys with experience working on big-analog, little digital mixed signal chips.  When you are the only digital guy working on a chip, you have to do everything from systems design, to RTL, to DFT, to all implementation and verification.  When you talk to digital engineers from big digital companies they specialize in one or two narrow areas and don't have experience with the whole design process and tools from front to back.

 

That's cool. I won't ask about your company just in case that could get you in trouble, but I'm curious to know what you think of the closest analog (bad pun), TXN?

 

 

I don't own TXN, but my company is about 10% of my portfolio.  I never buy my company either because my holdings come from stock rewards, but I do keep a certain amount rather than just selling everything.  TI is a lot larger and less room for growth.  And maybe I'm biased but I think where we do overlap our products are better.  You are correct though about the analog space being fairly conservatively and intelligently managed.  You could do worse than investing in either company.  I've owned Synopsys before as well, and have been looking at them again recently, which is a design tools company that most of the chip companies use.  An invest in the picks & shovels strategy.

 

[DooDiligence]

Funny story about playing music.  I'm a chip designer and the small group I was a member of in the late 90s was half in New England and half the people in Texas.

This was inside of a very large US company, which is now a Fortune 500 company.  Anyway the Texas half of the group had this idea that only musicians made good engineers, so whenever they interviewed anyone they would casually ask if they played any instruments and would only hire people who did.  Word eventually got out that they were doing this and they were ordered quite strongly to stop it.

 

Was it AMD?

 

No.  I still work at the company (or rather I should say, I now work there again), so I'd rather not say.  Ticker does start with an A though.  Followed by a D and an I.  That team in Texas that was doing this no longer exists though, they didn't survive the 2000 crash.

 

My Dad worked for AMD a long time ago & the office had a disproportionate number of impressive (yet largely unknown) musicians.

[Spekulatius]

 

That team in Texas that was doing this no longer exists though, they didn't survive the 2000 crash.

 

I guess the music stopped at some point.

[rkbabang]

 

That team in Texas that was doing this no longer exists though, they didn't survive the 2000 crash.

 

I guess the music stopped at some point.

 

 

The day the music died.