One encouraging insight from the forum was that universities do not necessarily need to wait for perfect conditions before introducing students to IC design.

Stakeholders noted that open-source tools can still play a meaningful role in helping students build foundational frontend analog/mixed-signal and digital design skills, particularly at the undergraduate level. For many schools, these platforms can serve as an important entry point into semiconductor education and help expand awareness of IC design beyond a small number of institutions.

At the same time, participants were candid about the limitations. While open-source environments have progressed significantly, several industry stakeholders noted that students trained exclusively on these platforms may still struggle to transition into production-level semiconductor workflows, with one participant bluntly describing many outputs as “Mickey Mouse designs” compared to the complexity and rigor of commercial tapeout environments.

The reality, industry participants noted, is that the semiconductor industry increasingly expects graduates to arrive with real project exposure, familiarity with production-grade Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools, and understanding of collaborative design flows from day one. This creates a growing challenge for local industry players, many of whom are already investing substantial engineering time into training not only fresh graduates, but even faculty members and academic institutions attempting to build semiconductor capability.

It was also questioned why the Philippine government could not pursue a more aggressive national strategy for EDA access, especially because neighboring countries are already moving in that direction. Malaysia, for example, has supported nationwide semiconductor workforce initiatives involving collaboration between universities, government agencies, and major EDA vendors as part of its broader National Semiconductor Strategy and talent development push. It was argued that if semiconductors are increasingly being treated globally as strategic infrastructure, then access to industry-grade design environments should likewise be viewed as national capability infrastructure, not just expensive, optional academic software.

Sherif Sweha emphasized that sustained ecosystem growth will ultimately require more than software access alone. Long-term competitiveness will depend on stronger laboratory infrastructure, high-performance compute resources, faculty immersion in industry workflows, and deeper collaboration between academe and semiconductor companies.