The UK design centre of Infineon, a major German chip maker, in Bristol, where engineers design processors and building blocks for car microcontrollers.
Infineon is one of the world's larger chip makers, and its UK business is a design centre in Bristol. According to a job posting from Infineon, the Bristol Design Center develops next-generation embedded automotive microcontrollers, the small computers inside car engines, brakes and safety systems. A UK student-placement page describes teams working on TriCore, Infineon's 32-bit processor family used in engine management, plus accelerators, safety monitors and technology that supports automated driving. The Bristol team is part of Infineon's Automotive division, which the posting describes as the world leader in automotive semiconductors.
The centre opened in August 1999, when Infineon was newly separated from Siemens. A trade article from the time said the centre would work on intellectual property designs for TriCore and would work closely with the main TriCore design team in Silicon Valley. Infineon expected about 50 design engineers by the end of 1999, many from the Inmos chip operation, because it was looking for scarce engineering talent. Infineon's then chief executive, Ulrich Schumacher, said chip makers in the system-on-chip era need strong design and intellectual property skills.
Bristol is the only UK site we found for Infineon's chip design. A Companies House search listing shows a registered company called Infineon Technologies UK Limited (number 03782938). A UK student-placement page lists 12-month placements in embedded processor development, systems IP development and automated driving, hardware-based work where C or Python is helpful, and a Surrey engineering student on placement in the verification team. We did not find a current headcount, and the placement page is not dated.
Infineon's job postings list the company's values: valuing each employee's work and promoting commitment, driving innovation, teamwork and mutual support, trust, openness, respect and tolerance, and diversity and inclusion with equal opportunities. These are the company's own words from a posting for a verification engineer in Bristol, and we could not tell how they feel from the inside. Postings from the Bristol centre also mention a link to Dublin.
Roles in a design centre like this include microarchitecture engineers who plan how a processor works, IP design engineers, verification engineers who test the design before it is made, and methodology and automation engineers who build the tools others use. Because verification can take most of the time on a chip project, verification roles are common. Electronic engineering, computer science and physics are typical subjects. Bristol is also a hub for the wider UK chip-design industry.
Website: www.infineon.com
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