Donnacha Lowney
Talk to the professionals in an online chat
Date: Wednesday 25 January, 2012
Participant: Donnacha Lowney from Xilinx
On Wednesday 25 January from 6pm we held a live discussion with Xilinx’s Donnacha Lowney (Circuit Design Engineer).
If we didn’t get around to your questions during our 40-minute session, please check back as we will be following up on them!
Find out more about Xilinx in Ireland
Hi Donna from Smart futures here, delighted to welcome Donnacha from Xilinx for the first session tonight to talk about his experiences in working in the tech sector in Ireland. Join in and post your questions!
Hi all, Donnacha from Xilinx here.
I’m a Mixed Signal Design Engineer designing circuits to convert signals from an analog to digital format. I graduated from DCU with a BEng in Electronic Engineering before doing an MEng and PhD. I’ve worked in several national and multinational companies as a hardware design engineer before starting my current role.
Looking forward to hearing your questions.
2 questions: would design engineers in Xilinx in Ireland mainly have degrees in electronic engineering or would they have taken different subjects? Would they need to have some experience already in designing semiconductors?
Hi Tom, thanks for the question.
In the group I work in all design engineers have degrees in electronic engineering.
Xilinx takes graduate engineers. It is useful, but not essential, to have past experience. If a grad has shown interest in an area related to our business by work experience or a final year project etc that would be beneficial.
Hi, a question for Donnacha…which subject that you’ve studied have you found most useful for your career now? Was there something you wish you had studied that would be really useful to you now? Thanks, Louise.
Hi Louise,
the subjects I found most useful were analog circuit design, circuit theory, solid state physics and semiconductor devices. I spent a lot of time studying with my MEng and PhD so I was well prepared when I started in industry. Still in Integrated Circuit design, you’re always learning new skills and technologies and that’s what makes the job interesting and exciting.
What sort of microchips does Xilinx make?
And what sort of devices are they used in?
Would I use them every day?
Xilinx make chips called FPGAs: Field Programmable Gate Arrays. These are circuits that by writing some software code you can “rewire” them to do different things. For example, you could program the chip to be a traffic light controller and then by adjusting the code you could change the timing sequence of the lights. Other chips (such as those in your computer) can’t be “rewired”. FPGAs are really useful for parallel processing of data and find huge application in wireless mobile networks. A huge percentage of base stations use Xilinx FPGAs. As the standards change from 3G to LTE etc you don’t need to buy a new chip, just reprogram the FPGA.
You can buy evaluation boards of our products for student use if you’re interested have a look on digilentinc.com
Hi Donnacha,
What you do sounds very specialised. How did you figure out that that was what interested you most?
Are there any good ways of finding out what kind of work I am most suited to?
I’ve worked in a lot of different areas from designing experimental equipment for ultrafast laser / X-ray experiments to vision systems for sorting potatoes ;-) before moving to my current job Xilinx. That’s the great thing about electronic engineering it equips you to move between different technology areas. To find out what interests you, I’d suggest talk to as many people as possible. Some sites have self assessment tests like http://www.careersportal.ie and http://www.careerhub.ie and http://www.bluebrick.ie but I’d suggest these as a guide only and recommend you talk to your guidance counsellor.
We’ve a few questions that have come in here from Robert Patrick and Raj about what kind of roles are required by Xilinx and how someone can go about finding out more on this?
Xilinx has a huge number of different roles. Obviously engineering is huge but there are equally important functions in IT, Marketing, Legal, Finance, HR so there are lots of possibilities. Check out http://www.xilinx.com/hr/ to get a flavour and see the information on grad and internship roles.
Have you ever been to Silicon Valley in yr work and if so, what’s it like?
Hi Coleman,
I started with Xilinx in April of this year and haven’t made it to San Jose just yet. But I did the research for my PhD in Berkeley in the East Bay and also spent some time down at Stanford so I’m familiar with the Valley. The whole Bay Area is an amazing place and a real hot bed for innovation and entrepreneurship. The food ain’t bad either ;-)
What are the best bits and worst bits of your job?
Hi Paddy,
The best bits of my job are the design elements; especially putting the first phase or prototype version of a product together. In Xilinx, we’re always using the most advanced technology so it’s really exciting to be working on state of the art products and seeing the way the market is moving even before the products are released. There are no real bad elements; it’s a great place to work with a gym, canteen etc Maybe one or two less meetings to go would be good but you can’t have it all ;-)
Hey, have you moved around much since joining your company? What are the job prospects like ie… promotion etc?
Thanks
Hi,
I’m only with Xilinx since April so I doubt they’ll promote me just yet ;-) There is a lot of flexibility in Xilinx to move within the organisation and I regularly see roles advertised on the internal mailing system. Xilinx encourages employees to take ownership of their professional development and have schemes to help cover course costs if you want to do further study such as an MBA etc
Hi Donnacha, is at all guys where you work or are there girls working there too? Thinking of doing engineering but think there might be too many guys in the class?
Hi Sarah,
Yes there are women in the engineering team. For sure there are often more men than women but I wouldn’t let that put you off.
Hi Sarah, just to say that we’ve some stories on our blog of females working in tech such as Tara from Xilinx, Jennie from SAP and Regina Moran from Fujitsu as well so do check those out!
Just coming to the end now folks, so we’ll take one more question.
Donnacha, you sound very brainy! I’m goodish at honours maths – won’t be getting an A or anything and average at physics. I want to do something that I’ll get a job in such as IT or elec eng but my parents say I may not have aptitude for it. Should I give it a lash or should I do something more general. Thanks man!
Hi Neil,
Don’t put yourself down. Once you get to college there is plenty of time to address any deficit with the hard sums ;-) It’s much more important to do something you’re interested in; the rest will take care of itself if you put in the effort. Best of luck!
Thanks a million for that Donnacha and for taking part in the session. Thanks to everyone who posted in a question.
Thanks Donna