Three Years of Being Wrong and Growing

LinkedIn recently reminded me that I have been at Alphawave Semi for more than three years.? Typically, I dismiss work anniversaries as “not a thing”, meaning that they are not deserving of much energy.? How can I explain forgetting my own wedding anniversary, if I can remember a work anniversary?? But in the fast-paced world of IC design, where the next deadline is never far away, I started to believe that the occasional pause to stop and reflect is a good thing.

I started at Alphawave Semi in May of 2021, just before the company went public.? At the time, as employee number 100 (or something around there), I thought that I had missed the biggest part of Alphawave’s growth story.? I was wrong.? In the three years since I joined this incredible team, and as Alphawave approaches hiring employee number 1,000, I realize the wonderful opportunity I got to be a part of – being able to experience not only the company’s rapid growth, but also the growth of my own knowledge and experience.

My first task at the company was to port an oscillator into a cutting-edge Samsung Foundry process node.? This gave me the chance to learn Alphawave circuit architecture, its design flows, and the team.? I thought that life at Alphawave would look something like this from then on – I would get a circuit to design or verify, and then move on to the next one.?

Again, I was wrong.

The reward for solving some minor problems with the oscillator in the new process node was to be given a bigger challenge.? This pattern repeated and I quickly found myself:

1.???? Debugging very tricky oscillator coupling issues observed by one of Alphawave’s biggest customers.

2.???? Architecting Alphawave’s first generation of Die-to-Die (D2D) SerDes.? This involved working with an external contracted company to implement and submit the design for fabrication.

3.???? Working with an engineering team in India that became part of Alphawave during the OpenFive acquisition in 2022.? This work brought our new D2D SerDes to the newly released UCIe standard.

4.???? Participating in some UCIe standard workgroups, and discussing our D2D solution with a wide variety of interested customers.?

I may write more later about what exactly D2D SerDes is, but know for now that this is a vital part of Alphawave’s roadmap and plan for future growth in the industry.? It is something that I am proud to be a part of, and is not something that I could have predicted years ago.

I plan to write again when Alphawave approaches hiring employee number 10,000, and with a story of world domination in the D2D SerDes world.? But even if that does not materialize, this time of reflection allowed me to realize how lucky I have been to be a part of this ride.