• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

CAD Tech jobs ...

Status
Not open for further replies.
D

Dillusion

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 21, 2003
Messages
5,465
ATM i'm in highschool and im taking two 3-year classes, engineering tech. and drafting/CAD tech. Is there such a job as microprocessor CAD design? I know i wanna be a CAD engineer of some sort, but i dont want to design houses, i was thinkign more of GPU/CPU, PCB Layouts, and any microprocessor/PCB related thing like that, but it must major in CAD.

Is there such a thing or am i making up a job? I plan to take computer science and CAD engineering in college, probably the university of florida ( UF ).
 
You should probably take computer engineering and electrical engineering not computer science.
 
I'm thinking about going to Boise State University and getting an internship with Micron computers. Always be on the lookout for that kind of stuff too.
 
thats what i meant, computer engineering :p ... isnt that a very broad field though?
 
Yes, there is a "microprocessor CAD design" field. It's really reffered to as Integrated Circuit design.
 
There are two distinct classes here. CAD designer, which is NOT engineering. You're just a software operator, you draw what and how the engineer tells you how to draw. If you're an engineer, you design the IC's, and then tell the designer how to draw them.

Don't forget that the actual drawing is done mostly by software now, there are just too many wires for a person to do it efficiently.
 
Yeah, IC and also ASIC is what a lot of computer enigneers do. Unfortunantely, that field is not in demand at all. But that shouldn't discurage you. Things change :)

Also, if you go into that field, and become an IC designer, you probably won't deal much with the layouts of the circuits. There's plenty of programs that do that now automatically based on what kind of a chip you design. Designing chips is not really CAD related, since you use VHDL, Verilog, etc.. to design the chips. It's just like programming in C/C++ except you can execute functions in parallel which basically have a clock that drives the whole circuit. Much like how processors work.

If you go into IC, you'll be pretty much involved in designing algorithyms and implementing them onto chips, which is more oriented towards programming than CAD design.

However that only applies to digital circuits. If you are interested in analog circuit design, then in that case you would be involved in designing the PCB's as well. Analog circuits can still be solved with computer programs, however the demand for having an analog solution instead of a digital solution isn't that that high. Having one chip instead of a several PCB's to solve the same problem is much cheaper.

Either way, if you love that stuff, you should go for it. I wanted to do that when I was doing my EE degree, however I found out that I wasn't that interested and switched streams. I got my degree in power generation/distribution and control systems. It's a very industrial field, and most people didn't want to go into it. Most people just ended up doing a lot commercial stuff, like Telecom. Electronics, computer engineering etc...

Anyways, I think just went off topc there hehehe

Finish up those classes you have and see how much you like it. You'll see that it's a VERY broad field and that there are many opportunities to do various jobs. :)
 
Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering are the fields you should look into. Posters above are right, most designs today are done in VHDL and synthesized with software. If you want to get down and dirty with the layout, you should tailor your degree more to EE and look to work in "physical design." (as opposed to "logic design").

I am finishing up my dual major in EE and CompE. I had a job offer before I finished my internship this past summer. I'm going to be working in logic design writing VHDL- it's a perfect job for me right now. As a student we used software called Cadence to design chips. We also use FPGA's from Xilinx to emmulate hardware designs.

School isn't going to be easy, but the rewards will be worth it if you love what you do.
 
whats VHDL, i guess thats what i want to do. Thats included in computer engineering right? or is that electrical engineering. integrated circuit design sounds cool, but it isnt in demand much is it? or am i talking about the same jobs. Whats the salary range, im looking for like at least 50-60k/yr



EDIT CIWS- Not a job search / info forum.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top