Should I join ECE or not? Do I have a Future? This Message is a Response to these questions! Read this perspective!

Dear Students and Friends

A couple of days back, one of my colleagues asked what are the prospects for the ECE branch and whether his ward will have a flourishing career in this domain or not? I was not confident enough in answering this question. To be honest, I told him many ECE people are coming back to the software route. Then I found this interesting article, “America's chip land has another potential shortage: Electronics engineers”.

Having said that, there is an interesting comment by Dr. Sumit Gupta, Google Senior Management (Head of Product, Google Infra). Dr. Sumit did his Btech in Electrical and Electronics from IIT Delhi (1991-95), Ph.D. in Computer Science (UC Irvine), and Post-Doctoral (UC San Diego).

Dr. Sumit says, “CS is completely dominating mindshare among engineering programs in high schooler's minds - I see the anecdotal information as my own kids and their peers consider college. It's almost like the death of Moore's law is followed by the death of EE too!”.

This is absolutely true!! Just for your information, “Moore's law, a prediction made by American engineer Gordon Moore in 1965 that the number of transistors per silicon chip doubles every year.” Raja Koduri, Executive Vice President and general manager of the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group at Intel presented interesting statistics about Computer Science vs. Electrical & Electronics Engineering College Enrolment.  

During 1964, Microprocessor was having the highest popularity among EE students (100%). By 1974, this plummeted by EE students (70%). By 1984, the PC boom came but EE popularity further fell down (45%). By 1994, in the Internet Era, EE popularity gained back (70%). By 2004, Cloud Era started and EE Popularity/ enrollment decreased to 15%. By 2014, the Smartphone era started but popularity was stagnant at 15% and with the advent of AI, the popularity decreased to below 10%. On the other hand, CSE 0% in 1964, 15% by 1974, 65% by 1984(PC Boom phase), then 55% by 1994 (Internet Era), 90% by 2004 (Cloud Era), 80% by 2014 (Smartphone Era) and 85% in AI Era.

How does this popularity impact the semiconductor world! Where does it lead to? Intel needs to find 6,000 people to fill the roles in the United States and 3,000 to take up positions in Germany in the coming years! In Texas, Samsung will need to match more than 2,000 people with high-tech positions for its factory that is set to open in 2024. Japan needs roughly 35,000 engineers in the next decade. You know what, Intel, for instance, has vowed to spend $100 million to improve semiconductor education and research in the United States. Experts say that “there is a need to improve the experience for interns and first-timers in the industry.” This would help to fill this gap. World needs chip architects and HDL engineers, particularly when considering firms like Nvidia, Qualcomm, and AMD that only focus on chip design. VLSI is going to get traction in the future.

Students, it is not just your Python or Go or Java, but Verilog, (a hardware description language (HDL) used to model electronic systems) can also give you a lucrative offer in the future. As of now, the demand is high in US/Germany/China/Japan, etc, hoping and wish India catches this market when we start setting up our own semiconductor fabs/manufacturing units.

Hence, I am changing my response in favor of ECE with great hope for the future. There is a future however, aspirants need to be highly focused on specific domains (Embedded Systems, VLSI, Telecommunications, Signal Processing, Automation) and develop the patience to go deep into the design side.

Read more at
https://www-theregister-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.theregister.com/AMP/2022/07/08/semiconductor_engineer_shortage/
 
Ravi Saripalle
Note: Opinions expressed by authors are their own.
Pic credits: Pixabay