Industry Squibs

Back in December I wrote a short post about magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), and a few competing technologies, as well as a short mention about Freescale’s current efforts. Given MRAM’s potential it should be of no surprise that Freescale is not the only name in town when it comes to MRAM. Micromem Technologies Inc., a Canadian fabless semiconductor device company based out of Toronto, announced the other week that they have manufactured a foundry grade fully functional MRAM cell, and intend to deliver it packaged for testing later this month. The company is currently proceeding with a test plan for a 64bit MRAM that builds on top of the current MRAM cell. The 64bit MRAM arrays are expected to be available for testing in three to four months. The currently produced MRAM cell is implemented in a Gallium Arsenide process, but the company intends to migrate its technology into to Silicon Germanium process as well to satisfy the lower cost, higher density memory market. Performance numbers for Micromem’s MRAM are currently no available, but the company expects to communicate the performance data in early February. Capacity wise Micromem is currently far behind players like Freescale who offer chips with up to 4Mbit capacity, but the company claims that its products are significantly less complex, and will be cheaper and less problem prone than competing products. The reduced complexity stems from the fact that Micromem is not utilizing the magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) approach selected by many of its competitors, which introduces tunnel barrier and structural complexity, but instead opts for using a Hall Cross-Sensor (HCS) approach, thus the name HCS MRAM. Below is a diagram depicting the HCS device concept taken from the Micromem’s press release describing their successful HCS test. Micromem is initially targeting radiation hard applications, radar systems, satellites and sensors with their technology. Overall the technology seems promising; however, it is hard to make a call without any performance numbers so that it can be compared to other MRAM implementation. And while the company has successfully implemented a single bit, it will be interesting to see how their technology scales to larger arrays, and whether the HCS approach will really yield cheaper and more reliable MRAMs than the MTJ approach.

The other week EETimes.com released several snippets from their annual salary and opinion survey. At first it seems that electrical engineers in the United States do rather well compared to their European and Japanese counterparts, with median earnings of $108k, $61k, and $65k, respectively. Now where it gets a little bit confusing is that the median earnings for American engineers include benefits. What is not exactly clear is what benefits are taken into consideration? Medical, 401k, ESPP, bonuses, or maybe all of the above? It is also not clear what benefits, if any, are included for European and Japanese engineers. Sure engineers in many European countries might earn less money wise, but healthcare and other benefits might be provided by the government instead. Some clarification of these points would be very much appreciated. There are also a few other points of concern. Why is it that the survey had 1,600 respondents from the United States and 1,900 from Japan, but only 164 from Europe? Either someone did not do their job very well, or it has to be concluded that the electrical engineering profession has all but disappeared from the European continent. To be fair, 164 respondents are more than EETimes obtained last year, but the number is still rather pathetically small.

Salaries aside, it is clear the engineers in the United States are highly concerned about foreign competition due to outsourcing and H1-B visa levels, as these were the predominantly cited issues of concern. A more detailed breakdown of the immigration issue can be found over here, where a whopping 37% of American engineers support a limit on the number and time that foreign workers may work in the U.S. Furthermore, a staggering 44% believe that foreign nationals that earned engineering degrees in the U.S. ought to be able to work in the U.S. only for a limited amount of time after graduation. This attitude is absolutely contrary to what many economic scholars suggest as the proper course of action for the U.S. in order to stay competitive with other countries over the next few decades. As discussed in a previous post, the Kauffman Foundation for example recommends a disbanding of the H1-B visa cap altogether. Others have suggested for the U.S. to institute programs that would enable students of advanced degrees to obtain citizenship upon successful completion of these degrees. Clearly, what American engineers believe is best for their career in the engineering field at this point does not align with what many policy makers and economic pundits believe to be best for the country in the long-term. Then again, maybe foreign workers don’t exactly want to stick around in the U.S. anyhow. Plenty of developing countries offer very good opportunities for skilled workers nowadays, and most of them offer significantly more vacation time that gets fully utilized by the workforce – translation: no more feeling bad about taking off two or three weeks at a time.

Last month, Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch gave his last lecture at the university, titled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. Randy is a professor of computer science, and is the co-founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), as well as the creator of the Alice educational program.  If you don’t know, the ETC is one of the premiere programs in the country that brings engineers and artists together and simply creates some amazing stuff – As a matter of fact the program has such a high reputation that companies have signed agreements that guarantee that they will hire students who have completed the program. On a sad note though, Randy is dying from pancreatic cancer, and this last lecture was his farewell advice on how to achieve your childhood dreams. This might not seem directly related to semiconductors and startups, but one should never forget that inspiration is one of the key factors that enables individuals to reach beyond what seems possible and come up with new ideas and approaches to difficult problems. Randy fills this lecture with priceless lessons learned and so much inspiration that regardless whether you work for a large corporation or a small startup you are bound to find some useful advice in his words. Some of my favorite quotes include: experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted; enabling the dreams of others is more rewarding than enabling your own; brick walls are there for a reason: they let people prove that they want something bad enough. So fix yourself a cup of coffee, for the lecture is about an hour and a half long, sit back and absorb all the great lessons that Randy has to offer in the video below.