A vital part of Singapore's economy is the electronic industry. This industry accounts for twenty five percent of Singapore's total manufacturing output. The industry has approximately eighty thousand workers and many of these works stand out. A couple of these hard working people where profiled and this article speaks a little about them.
Kevin Koh is a thirty four year old that leads the central processing unit team at Media Tek Singapore. This team works with many other team from around the world to make better the CPUs that are installed in everything from phones to internet boxes. With the demand for higher performance Mr Koh's believes to combat this with multiple CPU installed on the silicon chips of electronic devices that will increase the capability of the device. The energy efficiency of the CPUs is also something that Mr. Koh's team of technicians have worked on. Anyone can relate to their phone's battery going dead in crucial moments due to power leakage. The prevention of this s also a task that the team has been charged with.
At the time of Mr. Koh's employment to Media Tek as a physical design engineer the demand for digital performance was not as high as it is today. Even Mr Koh himself used a simple phone that allowed him to make calls and messages. He has upgraded somewhat to a device that runs on a quad core that enables him to take pictures, send email and a host of other task right from his cell phone. He commented that personally using the devices that his team had worked on the CPUs is the best and perfect way to test the quality of the device while making note on the required upgrades that will make the device more dynamic.
It is the belief of Mr. Koh that customized machines are always better and less expensive than conventional ones. He finished University with a degree in electronic and electrical engineering in 2005 and spent his first year of employment at Fujitsu Microelectronics Asia Limited. He then left to join the team at Media Tek and was shortly promoted staff engineer and then to manager of the CPU high performance team. He has currently completed a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering.
The Singapore Silicon Laboratories has a forty eight year old design director that goes by the name Leung Kafai. Ms. Leung Kafai has always been fascinated with how things work and spent most of her time playing in her father's tool box as a child. At that time she was only skilled at pulling apart devices but as she grew so did her skills. She attended Texas A&M University and attained a Bachelor of Science in nineteen eighty five after which she worked as a system designer in Texas. She shortly attained an Electrical Engineering master's degree in Austin at the University of Texas.
She became a part of a startup organization in the year two thousand called Cygnal Integrated Products. This company was soon later swallowed up by Silicon Labs. Her new job title at this point was senior engineer and as her new company established a team in Singapore she got the chance to be the team leader of the microelectronics design. Her team is the one responsible for the artificial intelligence of electronic devices such as their energy efficiency. She leads a team of twenty that is responsible for the design of chips. She is a strong believer in having a social life and she tries to keep hers and her teammates weekends free to spend with friends and family. She also plans get together for her teams and their families.
The next hard worker to speak about many love and without even knowing they do. She is the designer of the chip in television sets that allow you to channel surf. She gets very proud whenever she sees a television set on knowing that it was possible thanks to something she created. She commented that the rapid advancements in microelectronics is what keeps her so interested and intrigued to the field. She worked in Britain for a couple of years where she eventually finished a Master's in Electronic Circuit Design and Manufacture. This was from the University of Dundee. She worked for a couple companies back in Singapore before becoming a part of the Broadcom team in the year two thousand and five.