VLSI and EE/CE Hardware

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>I’m a guy interested in both software & hardware, and am doing EE (VLSI&Embedded Computing option) and have two questions/concerns:</p>

<li>I’m thinking about grad. school and would like to do something like VLSI. I’m a little worried about my graduate studies being in a specific area which may or may not be around in 10-15 years. Do you guys think that maybe it would be a better long-term decision if I specialized in something like Digital Signal Processing which has less of a chance of becoming obsolete later in my career? Or will the training in VLSI also make me a better engineer overall and therefore benefit me regardless of the direction I take?</li>
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<p>I just don’t want to spend years studying a technique/technology that may soon disappear (VLSI is just an example, its a general point)</p>

<li>I’m interested in both software and hardware like I said, the CE program in my school is rather weak in terms of hardware, its a CSE program not ECE. I feel the EE program is better for me. So for grad. school i’m thinking about doing CE just to get a little more programming knowledge but I want to learn more about hardware too. So to a potential employer, how is an EE’s hardware knowlege compared to a CE’s? Will they assume a EE has much more in-depth and valuable hardware experience or will they not care either way? To a hardware job (intel, graphics, devices, etc) does an EE degree look better?</li>
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<p>Thanks guys
-Fatpig</p>

2

<p>I would be extremely surprised if VLSI as it is today didn't exist in 10-15 years. I am skeptical that we will move away from current CMOS/BJT technology without some huge breakthrough, which I assure you has not happened yet. Honestly though, VLSI is specialized enough that I cannot see how it has broad use outside of that area.</p>

<p>If you're really concerned about job security, maybe you should look into electric power systems. It's not a "hot" area so it's not super competitive and electricity is going nowhere anytime soon. In fact, it's so "not hot" that there are only about 10 people out of a thousand grad students here at GT ECE that specialized in power systems, and that proportion does not reflect the demand from employers.</p>