I am currently working on Physical design/Physical design methodology. Over the last couple of weeks these few points are bothering me : 1. Disparity between SW and HW engineers TC. 2. Long term future of being a HW ASIC engineer. 3. Intel as a company not looking promising. I am considering switching to a new role and want to take this opportunity and step in the right direction. I have the following questions : 1. Is moving to performance modeling/computer architecture domain be good move as a stepping stone to move into SW. 2. How difficult is it to switch to computer architecture domain internally. 2. What is the future of physical design engineers? Answer will me decide whether is worth to switch from my 3 years of Physical design expertise. Experience : 3 years post Master's. I had taken a couple of courses on Architecture in grad school. With correct preparations I would be able to crack the interviews.
Why not just switch to software directly
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Switch to software directly if that’s your end goal!
I was hoping to use the HW expertise and transition to architecture level role first and then depending on how I like it , move to a pure SW role? Why do you suggest to move to Software directly ?
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I would like to know the answer to that as well. im in a similar position. Am not sure if moving to sw is ok as far as visa and greencard are concerned.
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Architecture over SW any day. Processor architecture, Systems architecture is the cream. Run of the mill SW may not be in demand in the future when even high schoolers can code.
By that time you'll have AI that generates hardware. Facebook already published a paper with a network that adapts to the hardware it runs on.
Lol listen to Nvidia and get locked in to tier 3 TC forever. Unless you can't code, there's no reason not to switch to SW and get paid 2-3x. Who knows what future holds, you can jump again in 10 yrs if SW fades out
Im switching to swe directly. Been leetcoding for 3 months. Ill be ready in another 2 and ill never come back to this shitty semiconductor industry.
End of Moore’s law indicates customization is the solution to get perf. This is what David Patterson (ACM Turing recipient) told me when I was in grad school, and had a 1:1 chat in a conference. Few years later, he and his team at Google introduced TPU.
Dm me..I can guide you a bit