Interview with Randy Paul

Featured Engineer

Randy Paul

Randy Paul - Senior Hardware Design Engineer, working for Western Digital Corporation

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

I “got into it” as a byproduct of my education. I had no experience or knowledge when I graduated from high school. I got my degree in 1987.

What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?

I enjoy working with my Keil Software, uLINK Pro Debug cable, and my Intronix USB Logic Analyzer, and of course my Fluke Multimeter

What are your favorite software tools that you use?

The coolest Software Tool around is the Linear Technology product called LT Spice.

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

While working at Micron Technology, I debugged a huge high speed circuit board which ran clock signals around a large board at high speed, around 1.6GHz. After some months of debugging and getting very frustrated, I discovered that the master clock chip footprint was the worng size, it was just a few thousandth of an inch too large.

I discovered that by putting a large, automotive clamp on the board, I could crush the chip, make it wider and the clock chip would make a better connection.

Imagine looking into a very high tech lab and seeing an engineer woirking with a $15,000 circuit board that is dominated by a huge, metal “C” clamp, and you can see why the time spent fixing that bug was memorable.

What is on your bookshelf?

Books about ARM specs and implementation. Low Power Battery Systems, C++, and Neil Stephenson’s “Snow Crash”, the best sci-fi book ever.

Do you have any tricks up your sleeve? (special way to analyze circuits, special process you use to make something, etc.)

I have many tricks, garnered from 25 years in the trenches. Hard to list here. Mainly, I mean repeatable work habits that lead to results. I have special formats for doing schematics, writing code, and other tasks.

What has been your favorite project?

The Fastac II project that I did at Micron has been my career masterpiece (so far). I designed a large board, that had many FPGA devices, and was many layers thick. I spent 18 months designing and debugging the design, and the project was a success for the company. I learned so much that the experience gave my career new life.

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences? (blowing up things, getting shocked, etc.)

I haven’t had too many spectacular successes or failures. I caused a small fire at Micron which resulted in Security arriving to insure that it had been properly extinguished (it had), but that wasn’t really too spectacular.

Once, At Quantum in Boulder, CO, I failed to fix a bug on a board, another engineer was appointed to take over, and a half year later, I was laid off…but that is no fun to talk about.

Once, I got the willies that layoffs were coming, when I worked at Integral Peripherals in Boulder, CO, so I got a new job, and I was the only person in the company to have a job the Monday after the company went out of business. That isn’t too fun, either….

What are you currently working on?

I am presently designing a multichannel magnetic recording system which allows a piece of equipment called a “Media Writer” to write information of 30 disk surfaces at once.

The Media Writer is used to format disk drive media before it is put into the drive during manufacturing.

I am also working on an embedded control system, based on an ARM Cortex M-3 processor which uses GPS and MEMs sensors to report on the location of a piece of equipment to a network based on events detected by an accelerometer, gyroscope, or temperature sensor.

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

The Disk Drive industry is undergoing consolidation while the overall market is growing very slowly. This means that employment in this industry is declining.

Also, because of the needs of disk drives to deliver higher and higher capacities, the method that we use to manufacture the drives is using less and less hardware and more and more software with time.

Both of these trends converge to make disk drive engineering a poor place for someone who is going to be in the work force for a long time.

In the next few years, I see a transition for myself from industrial manufacturing support, which I have done at many companies, towards working on low power, embedded control systems using,

Battery Power
Wireless Networking
GPS and MEMS
High Speed Serial Datacom/Low Speed Serial equipment communications
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

Just look at what is on a smart phone BOM……

Whomever is making money in electronics five years from now, will probably have a strong base in some or many of these technologies.

What challenges do you foresee in our industry?

Our industry is getting crunshed by the continuing fallout from the financial crisis which started a few years ago and was never solved.

Electronics, especially leading edge semiconductors, requires a high level of investment and ventures which can tolerate a lot of risk. These two elements are pretty hard to get when there is little money around.

Why is there so little new FAB investment in the US? Why aren’t we building 450mm? Why is a new 300mm in Boise so hard to do? It should have been started five years ago…Where are all the new start ups?

So, new companies in the US will be fewer and farther between going forward. When was the last time a truly new systems company got started? A long time ago.

Also, new software tools will take over the kind of work frequently done by entry level employees.

Also, foreign engineers will increase their level of knowledge and experience, and as the physical plant in their countries improves (if,if,if), then they will be able to take on more work that right now comes to our shores to be developed.

These trends will develop over the next few years and make the employment and business opportunities harder to find unless someone is very well trained and experienced.

The salad days are over for American electronics engineering unless a new commitment to financial reform and education reform is made.

But, looking around the landscape, few are talking about making these improvements and the political consensus, what little there is, is looking elsewhere.

Which isn’t to say that the future is doom and gloom, just change. A sufficiently aware person, who is watching market trends, can still do pretty well in this environment. The world market becomes more important.

So, a embedded control engineer, working for an Indian company, doing original conceptual design, shouldn’t be worried…

The rest of us? Our kids?

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