After studying electronics and computer science in my bachelor’s, I wanted to put my skills to the test and chose to do an internship at the European electronics giant Nokia in Antwerp. I learned two important things in this internship, which I still find useful today.
If you do an internship on chip design, it is normal that you will eventually also learn more about how chips are designed. Using SystemVerilog, the logic behind the hardware is designed by the designer (a.k.a. me). This is then verified using a combination of Python and SystemVerilog to see if the design does what it is supposed to do. Finally, this is translated to transistors using a process called synthesis. I’m still very fascinated by the world of semiconductors and everything related to chips and I’m glad that could have more of a look behind the scenes.
More important than any hard skills I could have learned at Nokia, I learned about people. During my internship, I worked closely together with Martijn. I learned a lot from looking at the same problems through a different lens. My major advice to people doing an internship would be to do it somewhere where you work with other interns.