Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?
Calls to retrain computer science graduates for chip and hardware design are meeting skepticism from both software and electrical engineers. Commenters argue that while digital hardware design shares many skills with software and CS graduates can be effective in areas like verification, systemic barriers—proprietary and expensive tools, concentrated job markets, weaker pay in many regions, and shrinking hardware curricula—limit entry and incentives. Several note that any real talent shortage is shaped less by raw ability and more by industry structure, outsourcing, and the lack of open, modern tooling and educational paths into semiconductor design.
Scope: Chip vs. PCB Design
- Several commenters note the article is about silicon / chip design and verification, not PCB or device-level “hardware,” causing confusion in the thread.
- Some share that much PCB work is copying vendor reference designs and routing; “hardware design” in chip companies usually means RTL, architecture, or verification, a very different niche.
Can CS Students Learn Hardware?
- Many say yes: hardware and software share abstractions (state, concurrency, modularity); good software engineers can pick up digital design and especially verification.
- Others push back, arguing that pushing PPA (power–performance–area) and dealing with timing, metastability, and microarchitecture requires deep, specialized knowledge and is not just “parallel programming.”
- Cross-disciplinary people (HW/SW/architecture combined) are described as rare but extremely valuable.
Talent Shortage, Pay, and Mobility
- Some doubt a real “talent shortage,” pointing to underemployed ECE grads and aggressive offshoring.
- Views on pay conflict: in some regions and for cutting-edge chip work, salaries reportedly match or beat general software; others insist software reliably pays more, especially at big US firms, and see many engineers moving from hardware to software, not vice versa.
- Hardware careers are seen as geographically concentrated, less flexible, and more easily outsourced when work is highly spec- and test-driven.
Tooling and Accessibility
- Proprietary, expensive, fragile EDA tools (Cadence, Synopsys, vendor FPGA suites) are widely blamed for keeping hardware niche and discouraging experimentation.
- Lack of open-source tools and open flows is cited as both cause and symptom of weak grassroots interest, though some newer open-source FPGA/ASIC initiatives are mentioned as promising but still limited.
Education and Curricula
- Older CS programs often required substantial EE/architecture; many commenters report modern CS tracks dropping low-level courses, “deskilling” graduates for hardware roles.
- Several advocate more hardware exposure for CS (FPGAs, HDLs, computer architecture) and more CS/software engineering for EE, but note departmental turf wars and lack of faculty interest.
Digital vs. Analog
- Multiple commenters stress that analog/RF design is a very different, more physics-heavy discipline; CS backgrounds transfer poorly there, while digital logic/verification is more accessible to software people.