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April 11, 2024

What Makes Marvell: One engineer’s journey from learnings to lessons in a book

By Mary Gorges, Talent Brand Content Manager, Marvell

At Marvell, we celebrate the extraordinary experiences and accomplishments of our employees. Meet Fariborz Barman, an engineer at Marvell with over four decades of experience in the semiconductor industry – one of those at Marvell. He’s dedicated to testing new products, sometimes 30 at a time. He came to Marvell through the Aquantia acquisition, but his journey began in 1984 at companies including National Semiconductor, Phillips, AMD and LSI Logic.

His newest endeavor is a book he recently authored called “Semiconductor Product Engineering” that delves into his 40-year journey in the semiconductor industry. It’s meant to share his lessons for what any semiconductor product engineer might want to know to introduce new products to the market.

Here, we also share how he took Marvell’s Core Behaviors along with him on his journey to success.

Help others achieve their objectives.

Writing the book was a journey of its own. Fariborz even came up with an imaginary product for the book and used it to illustrate how to do things. “I worked on it for five years on and off, and in the last two, pounded on the keyboard every night. In my 40-year career, I’ve learned a lot and from all kinds of people, and I thought it’d be nice to condense all this into a book, so the next person doesn’t have to spend as much time. Hopefully it helps other people succeed in this field,” says Fariborz.

Execute with thoroughness and rigor.

Fairborz says it seemed overwhelming when he first started, and a lot of work, including creating all the graphics and charts. “The first part is to imagine how this thing is going to look. I wrote in a lot of notebooks. I wrote two to three hours every day the last two years to keep the flow going. In the first three, it was about writing the titles of the chapters and the thoughts for each chapter.”

He said finding a publisher came easy. “I’m subscribed to Springer Publishing, which publishes technical books. And in my Marvell inbox, they said we want to reach out to people who write. If you have an idea, fill out this form and we’ll evaluate it. So, I didn’t spend any time searching for a publisher, and negotiated a contract with them. Once I found the publisher, it became real. ‘Do this for this many pages, graphics …by this date.’”

Act with integrity and treat everyone with respect.

“When you’re writing, you tend to want to find sources for your ideas, content. Sometimes, you just want to copy something from the web. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be honest and generate all the content in this book. It’s all my learnings and examples.”

Innovate to solve customer needs.

Throughout his career, Fariborz has pioneered the development of fabrication processes, actively participating in experimental work within fab facilities. His expertise is based on mathematical models he meticulously developed – models that underpin every element of a circuit. “I’ve spent years crafting these models, which were then shared with design communities. It’s about bridging the gap between theory and practical application. I’ve always had customers ask me how to do this,” he reflects.

With his book now in hand, Fariborz is taking his journey public and starting to share it on social media. The forward of the book is by the CEO of Aquantia, that Marvell acquired in 2019, and where he says his time there from 2013 to 2019 most influenced his book.

Fariborz’s story exemplifies Marvell’s commitment to celebrating expertise and the sharing of knowledge. To check it out yourself, find Semiconductor Product Engineering on Amazon.

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