Briefly give me your background and area of expertise.
Juan Rey: My area of expertise is engineering. Over the last 40 years I’ve been working on high technology-related products from individual contributor to vice president of engineering, managing a large division, and over the last 30 years working on semiconductors and electronics and automation. This includes the last 20 years at Mentor Graphics/Siemens EDA managing the development activities for Calibre. Calibre is a software tool used for integrated circuit verification and manufacturing.
What is the significance of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) for semiconductors? What are the benefits for chip development with EDA?
Juan Rey: EDA is essential in the creation of absolutely any circuit today, and that is because of the large-scale integration that you have in any modern electronic device. So, you need very complex tools to solve a very complex problem that needs to essentially start with the high-level requirements. In a top-down approach, you need to start doing different refinements of a circuit until you finish it, and then finally, you need to do the verification of a circuit and make sure it will work. In addition to that, EDA software is also used in the manufacturing of the circuits mainly because the semiconductor manufacturing processes today have limitations. And then these tools in electronics and automation are used to compensate for those processing limitations so you get a chip that actually works and yields.
What do you see in the future as far as MASH’s role in advancing the CHIPS Act and in semiconductors in general?
Juan Rey: Well, with MASH and Penn State, the large number of academic institutions that are associated with it are absolutely essential to the future of the CHIPS Act and executing on the CHIPS Act, starting with all the expertise that exists in material science that enables creation of some of the new materials that are required to continue with integration, to improve power, and to solve thermal and structural problems. There is a close interaction between that activity and EDA. And the reason is that every time you introduce a new material or a new process, there are many adaptations that need to be done to the tools that are used to create the circuits. You see an interplay between those two roles.
In addition to that, MASH is going to be focusing on digital twinning. At the center of digital twinning is the concept of creating a virtual model in such a way that you can operate on that virtual model as if it is a physical model. And so, MASH will be essential in the creation and comprehension of all virtual models to reflect reality. And in addition to that, to enable all these major trends that are absolutely critical to improve productivity and so on that is related to smart manufacturing that essentially consists in being able to model first before you spend a huge amount of resources in manufacturing something. And that helps in the design activity when you are creating the concept, when you are executing, when you are making the machine operate, and then when you finish a product, deploy it in the field, and try to understand when and why it fails. So, all of that is absolutely going to be central to it and MASH is going to be essential because it focuses on all those directions.
And produce lots and lots of sensors needed for digital twinning also.
Juan Rey: Absolutely. The sensing part is critical for smart manufacturing. Because you need to connect the sensing information with the process that you’re using and so on.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Juan Rey: We heard in the presentations during the MASH Winter Workshop about workforce development, that it is absolutely essential. You need workforce development for the manufacturing activities, for the research and development activities, for the design activities of a circuit. Therefore, it is central, and MASH has a major emphasis in that space. We heard of all the number of new people that need to be trained and educated to help in this space at the K-12 level in terms of education, retraining, and of course in educating people on the basic principles of everything necessary. So, that part will be critical.