Kaivan Karimi – Dir. of Global Strategy, Microcontroller Group, at Freescale

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Kaivan Karimi – Dir. of Global Strategy, Microcontroller Group, at Freescale

Featured Engineer

Interview with Mike P. O’Keeffe

Mike P. O'Keeffe

Mike P. O'Keeffe - Hardware Design Engineer - Ircona, Dublin

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

I suppose it all started when I was younger. I’ve always been curious about the world and how things work. My father is a hardware engineer as well and I guess I always wanted to follow in his footsteps. I was always taking his tools and taking things apart to try and fix them or attempt to figure out how they worked. Like most people, I often ended up with spare parts in the end after putting it back together again, but for the most part, the device worked afterwards. I didn’t always know how they worked afterwards, which is why I decided to pursue a career in engineering. I built my very own radio in a tic-tac box and a crystal earpiece, which I would listen to intently as I moved the ferrite rod up and down inside the windings. I had wires, IC’s and old electronics strewn all over my room.

I was recommended by numerous people that software was the way to go, but being a hands on person, I figured a life in front of a monitor all day would probably drive me mad, so I decided Hardware engineering was the life for me. I didn’t find out until after I finished my degree that the money is all in software.

What are your favorite software tools that you use?

I use quite a number of tools in my day to day job and they range quite a bit during the project lifecycle. In the beginning I’d use Cadence a lot for schematic design. I use Allegro’s Free Physical Viewer for locating specific components, pins, nets and vias on a system with speed and accuracy during the testing and debug phase. I’ve recently really gotten into Microsoft Visio, which would have to be my favourite. It’s a great visual tool for trying to visualize out exactly what you’re trying to design. I use it a lot for functional specifications and schematic design.

What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?

Once the design cycle is complete, it’s lab time, which is where I like to think I really shine. I love being down in the labs, devising testplans, debugging faulty systems, trying to understand a problem and its possible solution. It’s the most social part of the project lifecycle. I have my own toolbox full of tools for any job. My favourite would have to be my closely guarded needle nose tweezers. It’s great for holding that resistor/capacitor/IC in place, while I solder it down. It’s great for getting into tight places. I’m a dab hand at the heatgun and am the current master of it at the moment, being able to place 3mm^2 XSON8 parts, which even our local manufacturers have trouble with.

When it comes to oscilloscopes, it’d have to be the beautiful LeCroy WavePro 7 oscilloscope that we had on loan for a high speed digital design we were testing a few months ago.

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

The most difficult bug I’ve ever worked on was a small system board that was based on an Intel reference design. It was the third revision of the board, it had an atom processor with embedded DDR2 RAM next to it. We had significant problems accessing above the 2GB mark of memory and having explored the problem further we had found there was a significant amount of noise on the address signals. This issue was supposed to have been fixed on this revision by applying a better ground plane beneath the processor, so it was assumed that the noise was being coupled from another source. I adjusted the matching termination resistors, added coupling capacitors specific to the frequency we were seeing, re routed power planes, cut tracks and after two weeks we were beginning to lose it. Eventually we decided to scratch away at a bare board to see the ground fill under the CPU only to find it wasn’t there. The manufacturers had used a larger drill size on the vias than specified, increasing the keepout area, thus eliminating the return path (grounding plane) completely.

What is on your bookshelf?

I’m an avid book reader and I love reading. I have a stack of IEEE magazines from the Microwave society, Circuits and Systems society and the Computer Society as well as a load of IEEE Spectrum issues, which provide me with hours of entertainment. I also have a few books from college RF Circuit Design, Exploring Perl, Exploring Expect, C++ the Complete Reference, Linux a Complete Reference, Verilog HDL. When I want to break away from engineering for a little bit, I’ve got the complete works of Sherlock Holmes, the Art of War by Sun Tzu, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, a load of business books and the complete Discworld series by Terry Pratchett.

Do you have any tricks up your sleeve?

I like to think I’m pretty good at replacing components big and small. My tip is use plenty of flux and fluxcleaner. The flux aids in the flow of the solder and reduces big balls of solder or dirty connections. The fluxcleaner gives it a nice professional look afterwards. Ensure you’ve a few spare parts as well when removing or reflowing small IC’s.

When it comes to testing or debugging a problem, I’m a massive fan of white boards to help visualise the problem and when working in a team to ensure everyone is on the same page. The last thing is my trusty Lab notebook, make a note of everything, take your time and think through a test before just jumping in. Obtain your baseline, your starting point as such and work from there. Make one change and test and repeat. Don’t make a number of changes and then test or you’ll spend more time trying to figure out what the fix actually was.

What has been your favourite project?

Unfortunately, every project I’ve worked on has been highly confidential, so I can’t give much detail. Without giving away too much though, my current project has been the most fun. So far, our own hardware team has doubled, bringing many new interesting colleagues from Spain and China. We’ve become quite close as a team and enjoyed many nights in together trying to solve many issues over a pizza or Chinese takeout. We’ve all worked long and difficult hours to build a system, which we daily proved and disproved impossible. I travelled abroad only a few weeks ago to the manufacturing site where I was in charge of bringing up each board and ensuring their quality before shipping. It was an amazing experience, full of hard work, late hours and great colleagues.

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences?

No awards yet, but I’ll eagerly accept any that come my way. My greatest accomplishment would probably be soldering down a 3mm^2 XSON8 8 pin multiplexer, onto a heavily populated board using a heat gun. It actually worked too. I was able to verify that it had an even flow of solder around it and that each pin was properly connected as well with a series of tests I developed specifically for this. The lesson learnt here is that when you have a load of FPGA’s on a board and in the region of about 2000 components, be nice to manufacturing, don’t expect them to be able to ensure parts this tiny will be perfect, use a TSSOP8 part instead.

Do you have an experiential stories you would like to share?

I’ve been electrocuted, cut, burnt and poured blood, sweat and tears into my work. However, there is one story that sticks in my mind the most. I was working on a system once, when I went to power on the board, the 12V supply shorted straight to ground through a tiny regulator. There was no short beforehand, it looked as if the board had delaminated and the power through this plane had caused enough heat under this part to cause the lamination to bubble up and fuse the planes together. At first it was like mini fireworks shooting up before the IC actually bubbled in front of me as I frantically jumped for the power button.

What are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on a huge international telecommunications based project. That’s about as much as I can say. Let’s just say it could change the world.

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

I currently work for a design services company, which means we work with our customers ideas and help them build that idea into a fully functional product. I’m not sure what direction I see the company heading in the next few years, but I’d like us to try for our own product design again. The problem with a design services company like ourselves is that we’re only as safe as the length of any given project. Licencing and royalties could be a valid way for us to make enough to bridge those gaps.

What challenges do you foresee in our industry?

We have a very diverse and international team here in Ircona. We have staff from China, Spain, India, England, Czech Republic and Russia. We have to go abroad to find engineers as there aren’t enough in Ireland. This is one of our greatest challenges and could mean a move to another country with a greater selection of hardware engineers.

Another great challenge in the electronics industry is the shortage of rare earth minerals that come from China, which provides the world with up to 90% of its total produce, used in popular electronics.

Where do you see yourself in five years time?

I’d like to see myself working with brand new technologies that are both interesting and useful. More than that though, I’d like to be the one developing the new technologies and designing electronic devices that change the world for the better or even just something cool that makes life easier.

What do you think are the core qualities for a good engineer?

To be a good engineer, you have to be inquisitive, eager and a logical thinker. You must always question what you’re doing and what you’re going to do next, plan it out and record it, always focusing on the desired goal in the end. Also it really helps to have what Dilbert refers to as ‘the knack’.

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