An Audio Interview with Damilare-Oluwa Adenyi, Siemens EDA

The week of June 8-13, 2025, I was in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada for the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) conference, and I was struck by the talk given by Damilare-Oluwa Adeniyi during an industry session on June 11th. I was intrigued by his work to identify either: (i) global level defects in Silicon wafers used to make computer chips, or (ii) very specific single transistor errors in these same wafers.  As a consequence, I asked for an audio interview, Damilare kindly agreed, and our discussion follows below.

Note: Following the audio link are time stamps for each question asked, and the first few words of response.  These are provided in case people would like to go to a specific question within the audio interview.

Question 1 (00:00): What is your role?

Software developer at Siemens EDA, and I work on circuit characterization …

Question 2 (01:00): From your talk today, I understood you are looking at finding errors in chip design in a global sense. Could you describe this?

During the design process, the characteristics of the material affect all of the transistors on a wafer.  This would be a global variation …

Question 3 (01:29): I come from the ion implantation side of the business, so, if there was a wafer doping issue, would that be then a global problem?

Yes, exactly, global means across a whole wafer or a batch of wafers …

Question 4 (02:20): Now what are more specific errors that you are looking for on a chip or wafer?

You can think of it as one transistor having an issue …

Question 5 (03:21): How do you assess a billion transistors in a chip?

You can end up with trillion x trillion arrays of electrical characteristics that need to be assessed …

Question 6 (04:38): How do you use machine learning (Artificial Intelligence) to solve those problems?

So, for a PVT (Process, Voltage, Temperature) look up table over many trillion x trillion arrays …. use machine learning to quantify the results …

Question 7 (05:44): What characteristics would you be interested in for a new hire?

You should be able to solve problems, and physics students should have the confidence to apply even if it is for an engineering role …

Question 8 (05:35): You grew up in Nigeria.  Is that where you finished high school?

So, I finished high school in Nigeria, and then I went to the University of Saskatchewan and took Engineering Physics …

Question 9 (08:25): Who was the Professor that inspired you?

It was Professor Doug Degenstein.

Question 10 (09:05): Did you get hired right away after graduation?

Yes, it worked out well, I secured a job four months before graduation … with Siemens EDA …

Question 11 (09:40): Is there a characteristic from your childhood that you still see in yourself now?

As a kid, I liked designing, and initially I thought I would be an architect … I loved Ironman and the whole Marvel Industry …

Question 12 (10:50): What do you like about living in Saskatoon?

I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, which has 22 million people cramped in one city … Saskatoon is quiet … it is welcoming … I’ve started camping in the last few years …

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It was a great pleasure to interview Damilare-Oluwa Adeniyi, and I was grateful for his insights regarding efforts to detect, assess, and understand errors in Silicon wafer production.  It is something I knew very little about previously.  I wish him well in his career!