Inside the Secret Lab Designing the World’s Most Advanced Chips
Dr. Ole Krukco, SVP of Design and Systems R&D at IMEC, discusses his leadership of a 700-person global engineering organization working on advanced semiconductor technologies. He shares insights on managing complex projects, the future of ASIC design, silicon photonics, and IMEC's expansion into Qatar.
Summary
Dr. Ole Krukco, Senior Vice President of Design and Systems R&D at IMEC, leads a 700-person organization across eight countries developing cutting-edge semiconductor technologies. Starting as a theoretical physics teacher, he transitioned to industry and worked at Nokia, Corvus, AMD, and now IMEC, driven by his interest in seeing his work impact millions of people's lives. At IMEC, Krukco oversees diverse teams working on circuits, systems, IP, and ASIC operations, managing the complete cycle from foundational IP development to volume production. He emphasizes that IMEC is not just R&D but operates multiple business models including foundry services for advanced silicon photonics, design services, and venture activities. The organization ships nearly 100 million packaged ASICs annually and supports over 80 tape-outs in Europe from TSMC. Krukco discusses the challenges of balancing innovation with strict product development timelines, noting that transparency and team focus are crucial during project failures since people are the real capital of high-tech companies. He highlights IMEC's expansion into Qatar as part of building a global ecosystem and training the next generation of engineers. Looking forward, he sees major opportunities in AI-driven design tools, optical interconnects, and eventually biological and quantum computing, while identifying supply chain constraints as current major challenges for ASIC volume production.
Key Insights
- Krukco argues that the real capital of any high-tech company is people, not projects, since projects may fail but maintaining team motivation and trust is what carries organizations through difficult times
- Krukco explains that IMEC ships very close to 100 million packaged ASICs every year and several tens of thousands of production wafers, positioning them as a major player in the ASIC ecosystem
- Krukco predicts that commercial optical interconnect solutions for chiplet integration in system-in-package will become viable in 3-5 years, noting that industry leaders like AMD, Texas Instruments, and Nvidia have invested heavily in acquiring these capabilities
- Krukco believes that RF and mixed signal design will be among the last areas to benefit from AI-driven tools because analog design is sometimes compared to art and requires demonstration of high-performance building blocks that are reliable and can yield in mass production
- Krukco states that IMEC IP is literally everywhere, claiming there is a 100% chance of finding IP developed or originated at IMEC in any iPhone, base station, or data center
Topics
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