Graham Petley

Technical Author, MOS Libraries Ltd

I have always worked as an integrated circuit designer, starting with 6-micron NMOS in 1976 and finishing with 0.13-micron CMOS in 2002. In the early years I did the actual design, but later I had management positions with a team of designers. I joined VLSI Technology in 1989 as a Technology Center Manager. VLSI was primarily a company that manufactured integrated circuits for other people. Much of their product was software and libraries to ensure working circuits designed as quickly as possible. In the Technology Centers we worked with the customers to ensure that their designs would work properly. We were also heavily involved in the sales function, trying to convince customers that our solution was better than the competitors'. This was the ASIC business (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) since the customer designs were specific to their applications. VLSI was bought by Philips, now NXP, in 1999 and by 2003 most of the ASIC business had been shut down. This was mainly caused by a decline in the traditional business model. Circuits had become so large and complicated that customers had been forced to become proficient in all areas of integrated circuit design and didn't want to pay a company like VLSI for design expertise any more. They also were not prepared to pay the higher production costs of VLSI's small fab. Philips too, after buying VLSI, realised that they were not actually interested in making integrated circuits for other people. They designed, made and sold their own. There is a big difference between an external customer oriented business and an internally focused one, and Philips decided to price the external design relationships out of the market as a way of exiting the business. Seeing that, I accepted a voluntary redundacy package in 2003 and left the company. I'm writing a book on standard cell library design which is even referenced in the wikipedia (not by me!) at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_cell#External_links I am living in the Lake District in England, after 3 years living in Malta and before that 8 years in Munich Germany. I'm writing a technical book about standard cell library design which has a supporting web site at www.vlsitechnology.org. I've worked in the semiconductor industry since I graduated in 1976, and from 1987 until I was made redundant in 2003 in the ASIC segment. I enjoy computing and using open source CAD software. I like Linux, choice and being in control, which means I don't like Windows or Apple. I also enjoy building models with Meccano, surely the greatest toy of the 20th century. I like eating out and moaning about overpriced restaurants serving poor food when I experience them. Now I'm back in the UK, I expect to be able to do this more often.