On April 12-14, Dr. Howard Ko, Sr. Vice President and General Manager at SEG Department Synopsys, Inc., was in Armenia for a working visit. He kindly agreed to give an exclusive interview to Synopsys Armenia Public Relations Manager Gayane Markosyan for 168 Hours Newspaper.
– Dr. Howard Ko,please describe your impression from Synopsys Armenia R&D site in three words.
– Howard Ko (HK): (Laughing) I would prefer to use 3000 words… In 3 words I would say – intelligent, well-trained, and capable.
– How useful and effective was your visit to Synopsys Armenia?
– To me it is useful to see the SEG resource characteristics at different sides, and it is very helpful: it is first-hand knowledge for me. So, I think it was very useful.
– What’s the role in Armenian SEG team has in overall Synopsys success?
– That is probably the big thing in terms of Synopsys success because every one of us contributes to Synopsys success. I would say that SEG Armenia is a very important part of the growth drive that we have in SEG Synopsys, so we are very fortunate that we have a group of team that has a growing expertise in yield arena. And we are seeing a very good response from our customers, and have good momentum in terms of growth, and that’s one of the top priorities for SEG in terms of the short and midterm business drives. So I think it is part of making sure that SEG Armenia can be successful in its turn and will contribute to Synopsys success that way.
– What are Armenian SEG team advantages and strengths?
– One thing I happily learnt on this trip is that we really have good set of leaders – very mature, very rational and intelligent leaders. Leadership ranks are very important for any organization let alone on remote sites. So, I think it is very good to have that. Knowing that, I think, some of the philosophy in terms of how do we drive a product and technology that would be very valuable to the customers and to Synopsys business, I have a certain opinions and I see that the team over here was able to learn and to drive that on their own, not necessarily linked to the philosophy I was talking about. So I was very impressed to see how they were going about it and making that happen.
Brian Gordon, Group Director, R&D at Synopsys, Howard Ko and Hayk Demoyan, Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute at Genocide Memorial, Yerevan
– Dr. Howard Ko,what are you taking away from Armenia?
– A number of books that Hovik (Hovik Musayelyan, Director of Synopsys Armenia) gave me (joking). This trip was all about business and I didn’t get to spend much time on social gathering or tourist activities. But I also got to learn about Armenian history and culture and I really appreciate that opportunity. I have never had a chance to get such a strong impression of people and nation like on this trip that I had, so that was very positive.
– How do you see Armenian SEG team in three years?
HK: I would certainly imagine, and the vision that I have is to make sure that Armenian SEG team will become the core competency for SEG on the yield side and potentially for Synopsys, that we would amass asset of knowledge and technology and talents centered around Armenian SEG team, that we expand the footprint that we have in the yield domain.
Gayane Markosyan
Dr. Howard Ko managed to squeeze in his tight agendaa visit to Genocide Memorial. After laying flowers he had a guided tour at the Genocide Museum where he left his message in the Visitor’s book..
SEG- Silicon Engineering Group, one of the Business Units at Synopsys Inc.SEG Armenia developed “Yield Explorer”, Design-Centric Yield Management Tool for Product Engineering, launched in 2009.