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Interview with Shiro Dosho, Team Leader, Semiconductor Development Headquarters - Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.*

How do you use Maple in your work?

I work in the semiconductor development division of Matsushita where I am tasked with the design of LSI circuits. I specialize in the design of analogue circuits and, in particular, I develop electronic filters and PLL’s. I use Maple during the early stages of circuit design; for example, I use it to analyze circuits or to calculate the precision of the LSI’s that I design. I verify the influence of parasitic elements and, in cases of high frequency circuits, I write programs to work out equivalent circuits and to represent the “S” parameters. By linking the results I get from Maple with MATLAB®, I then carry out simulations.

Why did you choose Maple?

In analog circuit design, theoretical analysis is very important. When dealing with complicated circuits, the task of solving simultaneous equations is almost unmanageable without a formula-processing system. I began using computational software (REDUCE and Mathematica) seven or eight years ago, but I have since switched to Maple. Maple’s representation of formulas and graphics are more aesthetically pleasing than the others. The reason I give so much weight to these visual effects is that I have found that visualization helps bring about new ideas and theories. As a matter of fact, Maple helped me a great deal in writing a research paper on filter circuits, which I submitted to the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers].

Do you use Maple for in-house education as well?

A training curriculum was set up in our company last year to improve our employees’ technological knowledge of circuits, the physics behind semiconductors and signal processing—both digital and analogue. The participants come from the department where I work, but many others come from development departments in Kyoto and Kanagawa. We plan to provide Maple training to everyone involved in the design of analogue circuits. The course text for this curriculum is also prepared using Maple. I am very pleased to report that our efforts thus far have lead many designers to use Maple in their development of LSI’s. The new function of Maple 8, the Maplet application, is appealing to me as well because various calculations can be made routine. I am looking forward to working more with the Maplet application in Maple 8 and downloading some of the free applications that are available from the Maplesoft Web site.

*This interview has been adapted from a Japanese translation. It was originally published in PC User Magazine, September 8, 2002, p. 7 (http://www.sbpnet.jp/pcuser) by Softbank Publishing Inc., Japan (http://www.sbpnet.jp).

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