We’re so excited that Ann Keffer, Product Marketing Manager at Siemens EDA, will be joining us on the (virtual) stage at Rambus Design Summit!
Ahead of the show, we talked to Ann about autonomous driving, what she loves to do in her free time, and growth drivers for the Siemens EDA business. Read on for the full interview below, and join us next week to see Ann’s presentation as well as other sessions covering chip and IP solutions for the data center, edge, automotive and IoT devices including the acceleration and security of AI/ML applications!
Question: Tell us a bit about yourself and your career path.
Ann: I started my career at Hewlett Packard working in R&D as a software developer for their proprietary operating system after graduating with a BS in computer science and math. I moved into management and held management positions in several business units. In 2012 I was recruited to Galil Motion Control, who manufactures motion controllers and PLCs, as head of Product Management and Marketing reporting to the President. In 2014 I joined the robot manufacturer Adept Technology, now part of Omron, as Director of Product Management and Marketing reporting to the CSO where we launch Adepts first autonomous robot. In 2016 I was hired by Cadence Design Systems as a Marketing Director in their IP group and after a year moved to the verification group as Director of Product Management for functional safety. In 2019 I joined Siemens to work in product management for a newly acquired copy called Austemper who developed tools for functional safety verification which is where I am now!
For fun I like to run and cycle and my hobbies include sculpting and drawing!
Question: What do you see as the big growth drivers for the Siemens EDA business?
Ann: The automotive market is a big one for sure. But big growth areas are AI/ML, cloud, 5G are other big growth areas.
Question: What’s the biggest challenge your customers face?
Ann: The complexities of achieving safety and security on large designs targeted for AV/EVs! It’s a challenging task and it’s a new market that I predict will realize changes that may increase the complexity of achieving safeness. Time-to-certification is definitely a challenge as making chips/SoCs safe and secure can add many months to the development cycle of a chip.
Question: As we move more towards autonomous driving, what impact are you seeing in the design of automotive electronics?
Ann: The challenge of getting safety and security certified to the specification of all of the standards we talked about in our presentation!
Question: We’re excited to have you at RDS this year! What key takeaways do you want your audience to walk away with?
Ann: Thank you so much for inviting me, I am honored to be at RDS!! Key takeaway is this:
Addressing the intersection of safety and security is a challenge, and together, Rambus and Siemens made certain the RT-640 achieved the necessary security and safety levels to allow any automotive SoC design using this IP to fulfill it’s required use cases.
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