Meet Keysight EDA’s Common Platform Integrating Manager: Q&A with Alexander Petr

Meet Keysight EDA’s Common Platform Integrating Manager: Q&A with Alexander Petr

Behind Keysight’s innovations in EDA software are experts like Alexander Petr, PathWave Software Solutions (PSS) Common Platform Integrating Manager. We spoke with Alex via Microsoft Teams from his office in Calabasas, CA to learn more about his background and vision for EDA technology.

Q: Let’s start with a bit about you – what got you interested in a tech career, where did you go to school, and what did you do before Keysight?

Alex: I grew up in Germany, near Berlin. Personal computers have always intrigued me, watching CPU designs advance according to Moore’s Law while RAM grows bigger and faster. I was keen to enter a university at the leading edge of electronic engineering, so I chose the Dresden University of Technology. In my studies with different chairs, I worked for Prof. Dr.-Ing.habil. Michael Schröter, one of the forefathers of compact device modeling, and that became my emphasis as well.

An industry recruiter placed me at X-FAB, and I moved to Plymouth, UK, for two years working on device characterization and analog mixed-signal process design kits (PDKs). I’m a bit of a globetrotter, and it was an excellent opportunity to see beyond what a Ph.D. program could offer. I became the device modeling group manager and moved back to Dresden with X-FAB for seven more years.

Q: What brought you to Keysight, and how long have you been here? What’s the most exciting thing you’ve worked on so far?

Alex: I joined Keysight in August of 2017. In my role at X-FAB, I was a power user of Keysight tools, both test and measurement systems and EDA software while building workflow solutions, for example a 24/7 measurement framework. I provided continuous feedback on where issues were and what types of solutions were needed. One day I joked with Keysight field sales teams that if Keysight had a job for me, let me know, and they soon did.

My unique perspective on Keysight products from both sides – as a customer and a developer – guides what I do now. I started out as a scrum master as we transformed from waterfall to Agile development. We’ve refreshed the user interface, added key features working with product owners, and targeted many customer requests, including some I made from my X-FAB days. I first moved up as a device modeling manager, then into this new integrating manager role.

Q: Congratulations on your new role as Common Platform Integrating Manager. It looks like it encompasses many different things. Tell us about that and how it shapes the EDA business.

Alex: As the name implies, the key point is “common platform.” There is not a single product in the market that can cover the whole solution, which is ultimately each customer’s workflow and the standards and tools they use to get the job done. Customers typically need more than one Keysight product. How do those work together? How do they enable customers to succeed? Are we anticipating and delivering what customers are asking for? We’ve developed a strategy to cut through all the different platforms in the Keysight EDA portfolio, enable workflow interconnectivity and create a foundation-level virtual solution. I’m a big fan of collaboration, and we have five teams working together, two existing teams and three new ones to improve scalability:

• Learning Products (LP), the team responsible for customer-facing documentation and education.

• Quality assurance (QA) always has a high priority in making customer experiences near-perfect.

• DevOps, a new team developing, improving and coordinating shipments in the CI/CD process.

• AI/ML is an area we are leaning into, pulling efforts from dedicated product teams together.

• Workflow enablement both internally and externally, leaning into Python APIs for connectivity and interoperability.