Many design engineers have had a long time to think about what’s changed in the design world. Some of them are still looking for jobs, frustrated by the remarkably slow pickup in the job market—particularly in the United States and Europe.

But as Magma CEO Rajeev Madhavan noted last year, coming out of the downturn things may not look the same as when we went into the downturn. It’s more than just the availability of jobs. It’s what the new jobs will be.

The convergence of all things digital and analog onto a single piece of silicon should give some hints about the shape of things to come and where the focus will be. Motion sensors, an explosion in MEMS, the combination of voice, video and data and more will change the notion of what constitutes an SoC. The previous distinction was Small A, Big D, or Big A, Small D. We are entering the phase of Big A, Big D, with the interconnections between the two becoming a critical area for development.

With enough real estate to pack hundreds of millions of transistors onto a single piece of silicon—along with vertical stacking of some die—there’s plenty of room for function and forms. What there isn’t, at least so far, is any structure for how to build that chip, how to integrate the various pieces and how to debug it.

That will provide plenty of work for years to come—not to mention lots of opportunity for new sales—for tools companies. It also will provide momentum for startups that can bridge some of these tools.

Most economists predict the financial world will return to health over the next six months, with some growth in 2010 and steady growth in 2011. It’s time for this industry to figure out what needs to get done and get everyone back to work.

–Ed Sperling

The job market for design and verification engineers seems to be exploding. In the past week, listings have been flooding onto jobs boards for LinkedIn semiconductor design groups. The only trouble is engineers may have to move to get the jobs—sometimes halfway around the globe.

There have been a bunch of job postings for semiconductor expertise in India, the United Kingdom, as well as places like South Korea (home to Samsung and LG), Switzerland (home to STMicro), and a smattering of offerings in Texas and parts of California outside of Silicon Valley. That either means companies are looking to cut costs by hiring workers in less expensive areas, or it means there are a bunch of new companies that have been financed coming out of the downturn to challenge the giants of tech.

My guess is both. That doesn’t mean Silicon Valley will disappear, of course. It’s still the core of innovation in tech, and it likely will remain so for many years to come. But it’s also an expensive place to live and do business, which is why there is a growing demand for expertise in other places.

Over the next six months, as the global economy begins its climb out of a giant economic crater excavated by ruthless bankers, financial traders and insurance companies, demand for jobs will pick up again everywhere. But what’s changed this time is that they’re being back-filled in places with the lowest overhead first, rather than stepping up operations in more expensive regions and then figuring out a way to offshore those jobs later.

The infrastructure for offshoring is already in place. Companies like Intel and IBM already have a major presence in India and China. And in a cyclical industry like semiconductors, you have to wonder what’s going to happen during the next downturn.

–Ed Sperling