Moore's Lobby: Where engineers talk all about circuits

Engineering careers, even very successful ones, don’t always progress in a nice orderly manner. In this episode of Moore’s Lobby, Peter Wawer, Division President of Green Industrial Power at Infineon Technologies, retraces a fascinating technical and business career that is still going strong.

As a second-generation electrical engineer, the industry still excites him. Wawer says that electrical engineering is “a fascinating topic” that allows you to “innovate and develop things to the greater good.” In his encouragement to the next generation of engineers, he states that “it's very rewarding tackling the issues and the challenges that we face” in society today.

Over the last decade, he has worked in power electronics at Infineon as they have invested and developed wide bandgap technology to serve important industries that are shaping our world: renewable energy, electrification, data centers, and more.

In addition to his extensive work on multiple leading-edge technologies, Wawer has been inside just about every corporate transition you can imagine. These have ranged from spinoffs and billion-dollar acquisitions to bankruptcy and government-rejected purchases.

When discussing major spinoffs like the creation of Infineon from Siemens, Wawer describes the “mixed” feelings within the company. Some view the larger company “as an advantage” by providing “more critical mass and more diversity.” While others see the benefits of a smaller company “being more focused.”

Wawer got started in the nascent silicon PV industry during his graduate studies and early career at Siemens. Then, after a number of years working on embedded Flash, he moved back into the solar industry; a time that he describes as “big fun” with the industry really beginning to take off.

In this Moore’s Lobby conversation with host Daniel Bogdanoff, Peter Wawer also discusses:

-The history and differences between thin-film and thick-film solar

-Why different semiconductor memory technologies—DRAM and Flash—are not fabricated in the same fabs

-Unique characteristics of trench and planar silicon carbide MOSFETs

-The performance and reliability challenges that impact power electronics beyond just the semiconductors

Season 6 of Moore's Lobby brings you new conversations with some of the most fascinating leaders in the electronics industry.

Join host Daniel Bogdanoff as he dives deep with engineers, inventors, executives, and more about the hottest trends and most interesting technologies that are shaping our future.

In this keynote interview from Industry Tech Days 2022, we hear from two leaders at electronics industry heavyweight companies—Digi-Key and Molex. Dave Doherty is the President and COO of distributor Digi-Key Electronics while Joe Nelligan is the CEO of Molex, a leading supplier of connectors and interconnect components. Both of these gentlemen started their careers as engineers and still have an enthusiasm for and understanding of the challenges that design engineers face today.

“It’s a magical world.” After several decades in the chip design industry, Stelios Diamantidis might be just as fascinated by the work he gets to do today as when he saw his first computer as a child growing up in Greece.

Inspired by the success of computers and AI systems in defeating humans in strategy games like chess and Go, Diamantidis wondered, “what if we were to one day be able to treat chip design as a game, a very complex game?” Armed with that question, Diamantidis and his Synopsys colleagues got to work.

Eventually, that led to their DSO.ai (design space optimization using AI) product. As Diamantidis explains in the interview, they started on smaller challenges in the IC design flow and have expanded over the past few years. “I'm extremely excited that this...technology has provided a framework for all of them, no exceptions so far, to actually come up with great solutions.”

When discussing IC design optimization, Dimantidis states, “everybody has their own definition of the problem.” CPU designers want to optimize speed, GPU designers are focused on reducing energy consumption, and flash memory designers “are very paranoid about size because they're going to manufacture tens or hundreds of millions of units.”

In this Moore’s Lobby interview with host Daniel Bogdanoff, Diamantidis shares his experiences at an early pioneering tech company working with “some of the most remarkable folks I’ve ever met” while solving problems that were “the stuff of science fiction.” He also shares insights from founding two different EDA technology companies of his own.

Here are a few other interesting stories and anecdotes from this fascinating interview with Diamantidis:

-How some life decisions come down to snow versus palm trees

-About how budding computer programmers in Greece used to share their code through a print magazine—our younger audience might find that hard to believe

-What Jurassic Park, US President Bill Clinton, and Stelios’ early dreams have in common

-It’s not really what you miss, but what you don't know you miss

There is much more, so go listen for yourself!

Get a first look at EETech's premier media podcast, Moore’s Lobby: Where engineers talk all about circuits. Moore’s Lobby looks at the story behind technology and the people who created it. Be sure to subscribe to the show!