The amazing world of Electronic Design Automation

3 December 2013

An audience of business associates; alumni; students; staff and members of the local community, were enlightened on the pivotal role electronic design automation (EDA) solutions plays in enhancing the lives of billions of people around the world in a riveting talk by Greg Hinckley, President of US-based multinational Mentor Graphics Corporation.

Founded in 1981, with its HQ in Oregon, Mentor Graphics is a global leader in EDA software with annual revenues of around USD 1billion and employing over 4,500 people in 70 offices worldwide.

Speaking at the most recent Business Leaders Series event hosted by Nottingham University Business School, Greg stressed that EDA is an enablement industry: “I work in a business that solves tough and challenging problems which changes the way we do things. Mentor provides the tools that engineers use to make products such as smart phones, computers, remote sensing equipment, foetal monitoring, and the electronics systems in cars and airplanes.”

Mentor Graphics are partners with the Nottingham-Sondrel School of VSLI (Very-large-scale integration) Design at the University’s Ningbo China campus, providing a three month training programme that enables Chinese students to become the integrated circuit designers of the future. Students completing the training are offered a four month internship at Sondrel, a major integrated circuit design services consultancy for the semiconductor industry. 21 students had completed the course by the summer 2013 and all have been offered jobs by Sondrel. Mentor Graphics donated software worth USD 10million to support the training.

Greg has maintained a long and loyal association with The University of Nottingham stretching back over 40 years to when he was a Fulbright scholar in Applied Mathematics at the University Park campus in the late 1960’s. He is currently Honorary Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Nottingham Ningbo China.

Brimming with passion about the need for industry to form strong partnerships with universities, Greg said: “EDA is a complex business providing world changing solutions. For example, a modern luxury car currently has over 100 million lines of software code in it and experts think in years to come this will increase to over 300 million lines of code. The more educated engineers we can have out there the more challenges we can tackle, this is why our relationship with Nottingham Ningbo China is so important”.

View/download photographs of Greg Hinckley’s talk from our Facebook site