Computer Science and Engineering Perspectives – Muhammad Zahran

It’s that time of year when high school grades come out and the discussion about which college your child wants to attend may turn into a fight between parents who want their child to attend a college that guarantees a prestigious job with a high salary and their child who wants to attend a college of their choice regardless of the future of the job. One person may say that the future is in artificial intelligence, another may say that the future is in manufacturing computer chips, and a third may say that the future is in high-speed computers. We have to admit that predicting the future is very difficult because it depends not only on technological advancements but also on the global economic and political landscape. Let’s look at two current scenarios.

Scenario 1: The UK cancels about $2 billion worth of artificial intelligence and high-speed computer projects due to the financial crisis, which has forced the government to focus on more pressing projects.

Scenario 2: The CEO of Intel, one of the largest computer chip design and manufacturing companies, announced plans to terminate the jobs of 15,000 employees, or 15% of the company’s total workforce, by the end of this year. The company announced an estimated loss of $1.6 billion in the second quarter of this year. The reason is that Intel cannot penetrate the mobile device market (smartphones, smart watches, and tablets) and cannot keep up with Nvidia in designing chips for artificial intelligence.

These two scenarios clearly show that the success of a technology at the research or even practical level does not mean that the market is in urgent need of experts in that technology, as political and economic scenarios may have different views.

Our article today discusses two branches of technology and how they relate to each other: computer science and computer engineering.

…

Computer schools should focus on software, i.e. software, including artificial intelligence, etc. For engineering schools, computer departments should focus on the design and operation of computers (i.e. hardware). Of course, each school should focus on its own major and understand other majors, but unfortunately, we see that some engineering schools’ computer departments focus on software, so much so that you think you are in a computer school. I think there are two reasons for this:

Computer design is a complex and expensive process that takes time, and we don’t have access to this in Egypt.

Software design is easier and the payback is faster.

Regarding the first point, we must distinguish between design and manufacturing. Design does not require factories, but it does require computers, design software, and creative thinking, which we can easily provide. A large company like NVIDIA, one of the largest companies designing chips used in AI applications and image and video processors, does not own a factory, but rather has the design done by a Taiwanese company, while the manufacturing is done by TSMC). Manufacturing requires advanced factories and expensive software, which means it requires a lot of investment. The solution is to start with design and convince major manufacturing companies to work with us to open factories, even small factories.

Regarding the second point, in terms of returns, it is indeed easier and faster to design software, but the competition there is very fierce and programming methods are developing rapidly, especially with the emergence of generative AI software like (chatGPT).

The bottom line is that computer engineering is important, computer science is important, and both can have a positive impact on the economy if managed well.

…

Since we are talking about software and hardware, there is one point we must mention. We use computers to perform a certain function because it is ultimately just a tool. The important point is that what we can do with software (i.e. software), we can also design a circuit (i.e. hardware) to achieve the same goal. This may seem surprising because people think that computers are just devices that execute software commands, but the fact is that we can design a computer that can perform a certain function without software. This computer will be faster, but it will not be able to do anything other than that function. Providing services through software is slower, but it has flexibility, you can develop the software and correct any errors in it. Therefore, there is a choice to be made between flexibility and speed. Computers have a design that allows them to perform some operations efficiently and at high speed, while performing other operations at normal speed or slightly slower speeds, and this is what many companies are now achieving by making certain computers perform artificial intelligence software very fast compared to traditional computers and other software.

The importance of what we are talking about now is that it allows students to understand what can be done with hardware and what can be done with software and provides ideas for graduation projects or scientific papers.

We have talked about the scientific and economic situation as it relates to computers, but what about the political situation?

…

One point we want to mention is TSMC, a company responsible for “manufacturing” about 54% of the global market for computer chips. The company is located in Taiwan, and the political situation is that China is trying to annex Taiwan, and the United States will not allow the company to fall into the hands of China, which puts the situation there on the edge of a volcano. The book “War Destined” written by Harvard Professor Graham Allison clearly explains the situation and its history. If there is a problem with TSMC, it can lead to a serious shortage of computer chips, which will affect the software and hardware markets.

…

Back to the topic of high school: what do students choose? I believe that a student must choose a major that he likes, no matter what his future career is, and then he must excel in this major (whether it is scientific or literary), and then pay close attention to what is happening in the world of technology to see if he can use this technology in his major. We hope to see geographers using artificial intelligence, geologists using supercomputers, etc.

We also want to see experts in the field of artificial intelligence and its applications, and we also want to see “Electronics Made in Egypt”.