Interview with Dr. Colin Warwick

Featured Engineer

Dr. Colin Warwick

Dr. Colin Warwick - High Speed Digital Product Manager at Agilent EEsof EDA

My Bio:

I am a high speed digital product manager at Agilent EEsof EDA, where I am focused on multigigabit per second design and analysis tools. Prior to joining Agilent, I have worked with Royal Signals and Radar Establishment in Malvern, England, Bell Labs in Holmdel, NJ, and The MathWorks in Natick, MA. I completed my bachelor, masters, and doctorate degrees in physics at the University of Oxford, England. I have also published over 50 technical articles and hold thirteen patents.

How did you get into electronics/ engineering and when did you start?

I started at age 11 building radios and small gadgets with a grammar school friend, Paul Hibbin. His father had a great collection of tools and components that he helped us with. That was the era of soldering discrete components onto tag strip and veroboard. The only instrumentation we had was an AVO meter until one day we snagged an old oscilloscope someone was throwing out. I didn’t study EE at college: I studied physics because that’s what they taught in school I suppose. I’m glad I did because it’s a solid foundation to build on.

What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?

Whatever gets the job done! But seriously, the only hardware I use these days is a computer. On previous project I’ve used everything from electron microscopes, through silicon processing equipment, through spectrum analyzers.

What are your favorite software tools that you use?

Agilent EEsof EDA tools of course!

What is the hardest/trickiest bug you have ever fixed?

Improving the yield at the AT&T Microelectronics fabs was the longest and trickiest project I ever worked on. It took a huge team effort over two years, but we increased revenue by over $100 million a year.

What is on your bookshelf?

Where to begin? A few favorites are The Feynman Lectures on Physics series, Electromagnetism by my tutor at Oxford, the late F. N. H. Robinson. It’s the most condensed treatment of Maxwell’s equations you’ll ever find. Oh! And of course Eric Bogatin’s Signal and Power Integrity – Simplified

Do you have any tricks up your sleeve?

I try to dig down to the fundamentals. That’s why I like physics. Also, always test your assumptions. I always assume I’m wrong, and I’m often right in that assumption. Always correlate your simulations with measurement, they are very complementary. Measurement validates the simulation, and simulation gives you more insight into what’s causing the waveform you’re seeing.

What has been your favorite project?

Whatever I’m working on at the time.

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences?

I made a spoof YouTube video for a DesignCon competition. It took me two hours one Sunday morning to record and edit it, but more people remember that than anything I’ve done in my 25+ year career. Go figure!

What are you currently working on?

For high speed digital engineers in the multigigabit regime, the lumped element model of SPICE isn’t enough, and SPICE is too slow. You need to add channel simulation to get the speed. Also, microwave effects come in and you need an EM-based approach that creates EM models of distributed components such as PCB traces. So, we’re building an integrated EDA tool for this space. It combines the best-in-class channel, circuit, and EM simulators. And of course access to all the IC models and EM models as well as measurement-based models.

With your blog, have you been able to help other engineers “become the Wizards of Electromagnetism?”

My main blog is here and I co-author another one with Marc Petersen here. The most popular posting were insights on how things work… “A ha!” moments that struck me and that I wrote up… The top ten postings are listed here.

What direction do you see your business heading in the next few years?

Higher speeds of course… 100 gigabit Ethernet is a hot topic for example. And rack-to-rack optical fiber links are starting to replace copper even for quite short distances like 10 meters.

What challenges do you foresee in our industry?

Leaving aside the global issues like the economy and climate change, the challenge of any business is always the same I think: how to create something of value that’s unique.

What’s going on with the EDA industry, Carl Icahn and so on.. Donald Drapkin saying “Management’s done nothing to promote [Mentor] shareholder value.”?

I don’t want to comment on Mentor specifically, but in my view, there are several dynamics in the EDA industry that set the patterns you are seeing. One is the customer’s IT departments like to buy from a small number of big stable, companies, but innovation occurs by a “revolving door” mechanism. Someone in a big company sees an opportunity, leaves, spends a year with two friends in a garage developing a beta, gets some market validation, then gets acquired…. often by the company they left! The high prices paid usually dilutes the shareholders of the acquirer in the short term, and if the growth doesn’t continue, in the long term too. Acquiring a software company is very risky because the main asset is the staff, and they walk out the door every evening. Plus, after acquisition, the founders sometimes go into so-called “Vest in Peace” mode and the drive is gone.

The second factor is that the EDA company CEO is looking over his shoulder (most are men) at Wall Street at the end of every quarter. Worried about orders, they’ll authorize crazy deals to meet any shortfall in revenue expectations. The fixed cost of software – development – is high, but the variable cost is low, so you always make a bit more money by doing one more deal… even if the discount to close it is large. But it’s a downward spiral for the EDA companies. It becomes very difficult to capture the value of their products. Customers figure it out and hold out for big discounts at the end of the quarter. The joke in the EDA industry is the CEO calls the CFO at noon on the last day of the quarter and asks “How does the quarter’s order total look?” The CFO replies, “I don’t know yet, the quarter’s only half over.”

What’s the solution?

EDA companies have to reward internal innovators who creates unique, differentiated value, and then articulate that value to the market. If the value is there, customers will happily pay a fair price.

Visit Colin's EEWeb Profile

Previous Next

Previous Spotlights

Featured Products

PCB Tools

Passive Tools

RF Tools

Math

Extras