Rohit Vidwans
Rohit Vidwans has over three decades of experience in engineering. The first 26 years of his career were at Intel Corporation, where he served in various processor design and engineering roles. Vidwans joined Ampere Computing in 2017 and currently serves as the Chief Engineering & Manufacturing Officer, overseeing the teams responsible for microprocessor design, testing, characterization, and validation of microprocessors, and finally ramping the processors into volume production and shipping.
Yesh Kolla had the foundation of his engineering career at Qualcomm, where he spent 15 years developing one of the first gigahertz mobile processors that is part of the Snapdragon series and working on Qualcomm’s data-center, server, and CPU development. Kolla has been leading the circuit and IP development at Ampere Computing for the last five years.
In an interview with Semiconductor Review Vidwans and Kolla highlight the semiconductor space's challenges and the strategies to resolve them. They also share insights into their initiatives to stay ahead in the domain.
What are some of the recurring challenges you face in your respective domains?
Ampere was formed to build a unique cloud native microprocessor that is power efficient to operate in modern cloud and data centers. So, the challenges we face in this regard are navigating through different stages of product design and identifying key technologies to be embedded in the design. Once these challenges are addressed, our teams deliver efficiency and sustainability through the products by integrating the right features and meeting customers' expectations.
Our goal is not to build the same thing repeatedly but to keep innovating and delivering high-quality products. We need to spend a lot of time making the right trade-off decisions because an idea that looks good on paper need not generate a return on investment.
Moreover, we usually have a yearly product launch. We handle three to four generations of already released, under development, and upcoming products.
What strategies do you adopt to stay ahead of the competition in the industry and accommodate necessary technology during the current technological evolution?
We nurture a learning culture within our organization. Learning can be from any source, whether past experiences, technical experts while visiting different universities, research studies happening in various domains that directly impact or benefit our product or conferences. Learning from mistakes is considered a crucial aspect of growth. We are attempting to create a culture that allows people to fail because the way to learn is to rapidly try something out, realize it doesn't work, learn from it, and improve on it.
To complement this, we have built a hybrid team with people from different backgrounds who bring the best practices from various companies. In addition, as a startup in the semiconductor space, our major focus is executing to customer demands.
How do you ensure each of your products or projects aligns with the overall objectives of your business?
Our product and architecture teams interact with the customers to understand the market trends and decide the critical features from their perspective. The engineering team constantly communicates with the product team for specifications and key requirements. We then determine trade-offs based on customer demands.
Can you talk about some of the projects or initiatives you implemented in your organization to make the process successful?
Different things need to come together to deliver the anticipated result. The most predominant requirement is an efficient cloud native processor, which involves a complex development process. As the technological process matures, we react to changes and make sure those changes reflect in our design.
“We need to spend a lot of time making the right trade-off decisions because an idea that looks good on paper need not generate a return on investment.”
Equally important as the processor is packaging for silicon, the socket and the entire system that the processor sits on, the ingredients that go into the system and tuning them to extract the best performance, and building the embedded firmware and software layers, which is a critical component of delivering performance and efficiency with the processor. As a hybrid team with expansive expertise and experience, we constantly evolve processes and flows to manage process technology nodes and processor design methodologies.
What would be your advice to your peers and colleagues in the industry?
The best way to stay innovative and be at the top of technology is to keep learning. I have completed three decades of engineering and haven't stopped learning. I find time to talk to experts inside and outside the domain to learn and stay prepared to address any new challenge.
Nobody is a master of everything, so rely on each other for help. It starts with hiring. Hire the best people and depend on them to execute things right.
We always tell our interns and college hires that when their manager assigns them to a task, it is not a final exam where they must do it all alone and prove their worth. You are part of a company, so if you are in trouble, raise your hands, find the right expert, and get help.
