EDUCATION: Technology: It's all in the design 
by MICHAEL SUN, New Sunday Times

The collaboration between a university and a company, which produces micro-chip wafers, has produced design engineers who will pave the way for a new generation of technology careers and lure foreign direct investment. MICHAEL SUN writes. 

LOCAL micro-chip circuit engineers are of sufficient numbers to attract foreign direct investment of foundries and micro-chip design houses to Malaysia. 

The resulting benefit of this is a new generation of technology careers and new value-added manufacturing exports for the country. 

“I think that the critical mass is close if it isn’t there already,” says Bruce Gray, president and chief operating officer at the RM6 billion Khazanah-backed micro-chip wafer foundry, SilTerra Malaysia Sdn Bhd. 

Located at the Kulim High Technology Park, Kedah, some 20 minutes away from Penang’s Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) with which it has a student internship programme, the foundry employs hundreds of engineers and SilTerra has trained more than 400. 

STATE-OF-THE-ART: The photolithographY area where the wafers are patented. 

“Rather than trying to get engineers elsewhere, the best engineers to have are Malaysians who live here,” he adds. 

Ninety-five per cent of the foundry’s engineers are Malaysians with the rest from Taiwan and other countries. 

“Critical mass” is the technology and the capability to make and manufacture the product to satisfy a number of bigger companies, explains Gray. 

SilTerra is a leading edge semiconductor wafer foundry that manufactures foundry standard at 0.25, 0.22 and 0.18 micron respectively, of Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor-logic, high-voltage, mixed-signal Radio Frequency chips. 

Last November, it announced the successful development of functional 8-megabit Static Random Access Memory chips made from 0.13-micron wafers jointly developed with Belgium’s Interuniversity MicroElectronics Center — Europe’s leading independent nanoelectronics research centre in Leuven. 

The new technology will enable electronic companies to produce communication, computation and digital consumer products with wider functions in a more cost effective manner. 

“Now that I have enough capacity here (at Kulim). I am getting customers (product companies) who aren’t giving me only second-hand (micro-chip) design but they are giving me primary design too,” says Gray who is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. 

“They want us to do it (the design) first because we provide value with our advanced technology,” he says. 

SilTerra has sales and marketing offices in San Jose, California; Scottsdale, Arizona; Hsinchu, Taiwan and Munich, Germany, to attract product companies. 

Explaining Malaysia’s arduous path along the way to attaining “critical mass” in the training of sufficient circuit design engineers, Gray adds: “The design don’t always work right the first time onthe primary design because all the design tools aren’t perfect. 

“That’s why we have been running our shuttle vehicles between the various design blocs in the factory for USM to try out design techniques. 

“When they don’t work out, you still have a product need to fulfil for your company and how do you get it fixed? You need design engineers,” he explains. 

Various product companies coming along to build their products are not really sure of all the design constituents they need although they have a good idea. 

They have not translated a circuit design activity into something that can be built. 

The entire infrastructure of the industry moves along that path. 

Design service companies need qualified local design engineers. “It will reach a point where there is a natural occurrence of that demand (for design engineers) and to meet that by starting a design services company, we get the people from USM,” he adds. 

“In many cases it is simply mass — you reach a tipping point,” he says. 

“We have that now, but four years ago we didn’t if you look at the additional enhancement of training with specific skills for this industry and which is being assisted by SilTerra. 

“Today, there are more people with those capabilities and it is moving in that direction,” he adds. It can happen under a policy directive or it can happen simply by reaching critical mass at a tipping point. 

SilTerra gets customers by being in touch with those with the primary designs. 

MIT has a number of professors who have set up companies. “They are running over here (to Malaysia) as long as there are no conflicts in intellectual property rights and patents,” he says. 

Comparing the level of collaboration between universities and companies in the United States with those in Malaysia, Gray adds: “They are very similar.” 

“I have worked for a very long time for National Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE-listed). We would participate through internships — exactly what we do here — every year during the summer, with the local universities in California,” he says. 

“The model that is being used here for this collaboration (with Malaysian universities) and enhancement of this relationship between industry and the universities is exactly the same one that the United States employs. 

“National Semiconductor is the natural circuit for various universities on a testing basis,” he adds. 

Programmes are actually very similar now. These are long term activities which may not have immediate benefit but have increasing benefits over time. 

Thirty years ago, companies in the Silicon Valley, California, had realised that if there were no internship programmes organised, the industry would be short of design engineers and trained people who were needed to design products and make new processes to help the industry expand. 

“That is exactly what is happening here. We started our facility here four years ago and started the internship programme right away,” he says. 

“Right now we are beginning to get trained graduates who had started four years ago,” he adds. 

“This is the way it is done in Taiwan and Singapore too.” 


About Silterra Malaysia Sdn. Bhd.:

Silterra Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. is a leading semiconductor wafer foundry that provides advanced foundry standard CMOS logic, high-voltage and mixed-signal/RF technologies. The company’s wafer fab has a designed capacity of 38,000 eight-inch wafers per month. Silterra, which is committed to world-class service and environmental friendliness, received Notable Mention in the Malaysian Prime Minister’s Hibiscus Award competition for Environmental Performance in 2003. The company is ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001 certified. Silterra’s headquarters and factory are located in Kulim, Malaysia, and has offices in San Jose (California), Scottsdale (Arizona), Hsinchu (Taiwan) and Munich (Germany). For additional information on Silterra or its services
, please visit www.silterra.com.