Hi Readers,
I am rolling out second coffee talk with Ramakant Kapatral, please find the short Bio below.
Ramakant Kapatral
Coffee Talk:
I am rolling out second coffee talk with Ramakant Kapatral, please find the short Bio below.
Ramakant Kapatral
Director at Orange Semiconductor Pvt Ltd
About Ramakant:
30+ years of
experience in diverse fields and in varied roles. Contributed significantly to
the growth of ‘Orange Semiconductor’, a design service startup company. Worked
closely with CEO to define goals, plan the course and realize the goals by
successful execution of same. Handled multiple roles simultaneously as required
in any startup.
In previous
companies successfully grew the team to 150+ and customer accounts to
multi-million dollars. Technical expertise and Skills cover wide spectrum -
FPGA/ASIC/SoC Design verification, Mixed Signal Board design, System Design,
Avionics, Industrial Automation.
Took a break in career to pursue hobbies in Sept 2011. Recently published a fiction novel in IT background, 'Certainly Uncertain', <www.apkpublishers.com>.
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramakantkapatral/
Took a break in career to pursue hobbies in Sept 2011. Recently published a fiction novel in IT background, 'Certainly Uncertain', <www.apkpublishers.com>.
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramakantkapatral/
Coffee Talk:
Vikas: First of all, congratulations on the acquisition.
Few insights about this?
Ramakant: MosChip CEO,
Ram Reddy, has nicely summarized already about the acquisition in the link
above. What I can say is, Orange Semiconductor is going to play a key role in
further roadmap and growth story of MosChip. I strongly believe, we at MosChip are
poised to become one stop solution provider from Spec to Silicon to (IoT)
System.
Vikas: What do you think about this Mergers,
Acquisitions - Is this good for VLSI Industry?
Ramakant: Good or Bad, it will be inevitable. In my opinion,
analogy (and also the reason) is, in non-IT industries (e.g. chemical, textile)
they go for the forward or backward integration in supply chain, to not only gain
monopoly but also achieve tangential growth.
From the
perspective of ‘acquired’ company the good part is your value, be it unique Product/IP/solution/offerings
or your expertise in growing business, is recognized & awarded. You get to
chance to move-up value chain quickly. In general, in any product segment, to
meet the market demand at right time (boiling down to consumer’s demand),
collective efforts of different/diverse value-chain suppliers are essential and
I think one of the reasons of continued Mergers and Acquisitions is to achieve
same (since you have better control now).
The bad part
of it? well it depends. For example, imagine that a specific product/solution
business unit plan simply goes to trash bin since it does not fit in to the new
roadmap after M&A. Now the team working on it passionately remain bewildered
worrying about their career and possibly thinking, were they fools working
devotedly on it so far?
The ‘bad’
part of it can also emerge when the ‘integration’ phase is not-so-successful. During
integration process, not only the product portfolio / offerings are integrated,
but teams (people) are also to be integrated. These teams have achieved success
with their own working style, thinking style, work culture, and motivation. So,
there is a challenge in integrating them under one style/work culture/process
and yet make them deliver more efficiently that past. Sometime the aggressive
style gets diminished after acquisition and 3+3 does not even become 6 ( as
against expected result of 3+3 = 9).
Vikas: Walden C. Rhines, Chairman & CEO Mentor Graphics
Corporation in one of his presentation said that “by 2020 we’ll all Work for
the same company”. What are your thoughts on this?
Ramakant: If I take this statement literally, I don’t think it will happen. As
per his slide, 2015 is showing change in trend of % revenue of top 10 companies.
But I am not sure if this trend will continue. In my opinion, consolidation and
de-consolidation cycle will continue. whenever consolidation curve moves up,
disruptive technology/business model or some sort of crisis world over will
reverse the trend.
Vikas: How did you start your career?
Ramakant: I started my career with BARC (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) in 1985.
The first instrument I developed was 8051 based control system, a part of
shutdown system of nuclear power reactor. I continued in developing Data
Acquisition Boards, Data Acquisition systems and subsequently transitioned to
FPGA & ASIC design verification.
Vikas: What are the factors motivated you to write certainly uncertain, a
fiction book covering semiconductor industry?
Ramakant: I like reading suspense thriller novels. It is one
of my hobbies. It stimulates my mind and imagination. Around 2011 I was toying
with an idea of taking a break in career. My wife fully supported the idea, but
cautioned me to find some activity that will keep me busy. That’s where I
decided to take break and explore writing something. I was in dual mind,
whether to project my learnings so far or write pure fiction, ultimately ended
up mixing up these two (but this made the spectrum of readers narrow). However,
I thoroughly enjoyed it and I was surprised at myself when it took good shape.
One of the
reasons to focus on lifestyle of engineers working in Semiconductor-IT was to
highlight their consistent hard work, non-stop challenges, which people in other
industry might be unaware of, except the attractive salary part of it.
Vikas: Your thoughts on IoT?
Ramakant: We were in similar situation close to 2 decades
back when mobile telephony was emerging. At that time many (including myself)
felt, who needs expensive handset coupled with costly call charges when one can
always reach out over reliable landline phone connection. But look at how our life
style (personal, professional, and social) and the way of working got
influenced (across all sections of our society).
This was the
result of connecting all ‘humans’. Now there is possibility to connect all
living and non-living things, 24X7, using IoT. Thanks to falling prices of
silicon+connectivity+integrated sensors and further, all operating at small
size battery power. This has opened up numerous possibilities of applications
in all industries, limited only by our imagination, which were not possible
earlier.
In mobile
technology, consumer did not mind buying costly handset & pay expensive
call charges when he saw value. Similarly in IoT also, the application scenario
projected to consumer should have a real value in it. Till then this may remain
as a hype. I think the development efforts are progressing in right direction,
especially in the last leg of the solution i.e. processing huge data with
predictive, prescriptive data analytics and applying AI techniques.
Application of IoT in Industrial automation seems
promising field. Maven Systems (now part of MosChip) has good product/solution
portfolio in Industrial IoT and non-consumer space.
Vikas: What's the one question you wished someone would have asked you, but
never did?"
Ramakant: I may be able to answer this after couple of more interviews J
Vikas: Is VLSI domain seeing a dead-end career?
Ramakant: I don’t think it will be dead-end career. But, the
role and expectations will keep changing. As, we have moved from ASICs to
complex ASICs integrating sub-systems to SoCs (integrating yesterday’s system
on to a single chip), the verification task actually has changed from complex
logic verification to SoC (system level verification) verification, targeting
use case scenarios on simulation/co-simulation/ emulation platform. The present
day systems are built with multiple SoCs containing multiple processor cores
& high speed connectivity peripherals, executing complex software
algorithms in realtime. So in future most of its hardware along with some
software part may get integrated in to more complex SoCs (what we should call
it – Super-SoC ?). So, the verification engineer will be expected to understand
such complex system and verify its functioning at system level.
Vikas: Where do you see yourself after 5 years?
Ramakant: The dream continues……Enjoying sunset from the lawn of my sea-side villa!
On career front, definitely something new, learning new role, applying my
experience to solve technical/business problems in the field
Vikas: What do you do when you are not working?
Ramakant: Read novels, watch action movies, listen to old songs.
Vikas: Whom do you love more, your parents, friends, spouse, kids, siblings, yourself?
Ramakant: Spouse and my Son
Vikas: What is the best gift/compliment you've ever received?
Ramakant: You inviting me for the 2nd session of ‘Coffee with Vikas’
Vikas: Your advice to the budding VLSI engineers
Ramakant: Make sure
you have sound fundamentals in digital-analog electronics and digital systems.
This is the only field where you continue to work in the field you have learnt
in 1st/2nd year of the college. For verification engineers, in particular I
suggest them to be thorough at verification fundamentals (what, why, how of
verification). Also, another “must” skill for verification engineer is the art
of problem solving. There is tendency to
focus only on language- methodology, which is required, but not enough alone.
Vikas: Any suggestions for Coffee with Vikas blog?
Ramakant: I am sure you have already planned it; try to
cover folks from different roles (right from VCs to project engineer),
different types of organizations (big/medium/startups, IP/product/service
providing…etc.).
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Thanks Ramakant for your time and wish you all the success a head.
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Thanks Ramakant for your time and wish you all the success a head.
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