The Architecture Team is pivotal in shaping the success of semiconductor products. Their work ensures that the final product is not only functional but also competitive in terms of performance, power efficiency, and cost. Meet three members of Ampere's Architecture team working to build innovative and reliable semiconductor solutions.

Name: Farzane Zokaee
Office Location: Santa Clara, CA

How did you first learn about Ampere?
I was contacted by a member of the Architecture Team to see if I would be interested in having a conversation and exploring the possibility of joining Ampere. We had a detailed discussion about Ampere's product roadmap, and I was genuinely impressed, seeing a promising future for the company. However, what truly convinced me to consider the opportunity were the amazing individuals I interacted with during the interview process. The more I learned about the team and the company's culture, the more excited I became about the prospect of joining.

What's the culture like at Ampere?
The atmosphere at Ampere is open and approachable. When I joined, right after graduation with no industrial experience, the senior leaders were supportive and always willing to answer my questions. They valued my thoughts and opinions, regardless of my experience level. This made me feel valued and encouraged. They want everyone to succeed.

And Ampere is a dynamic environment! There are always new projects, which keep the work interesting and engaging. These projects offer opportunities to learn new skills and grow. You can always challenge yourself to expand your knowledge and capabilities.

Can you share a recent project you worked on and what you enjoyed about it?
Recently, I started working on defining some features that would impact the entire System on Chip (SOC), It was a fantastic opportunity to dive deep into how these features would integrate and function within the broader system. The teamwork across different departments, including the architecture team, design team, and verification team, was an amazing experience.

Everyone brought their unique expertise to the table, enriching the overall development process and making the experience both educational and enjoyable.

What impact does your work have on Ampere’s overall mission and goals?
I am a part of the mesh architecture team, which is focused on developing scalable and performant on-die interconnect solutions that are optimized for our specific product roadmap. I am also involved in the Reliability, Availability and Serviceability (RAS) architecture team. Our team is dedicated to ensuring that systems are reliable, available, and serviceable, which is crucial for cloud environments. Ampere products is designed to provide extensive enterprise server-class RAS capabilities.

What do you enjoy outside of work?
Hiking, photography, and spending time with my cat!

Name: Matt Erler
Office Location: Portland, Oregon

How did you first learn about Ampere?
Back in February 2018, Ampere announced that they were building an ARM server processor. I did some research and found out that the chief architect was Atiq Bajwa, someone I had worked with previously! That got me really interested, but it took me about six months to finally reach out, apply, and get started.

What's the culture like at Ampere?
I think about Ampere in two ways; socially and technically. Socially, Ampere is an open and friendly place where everyone is welcome. We eat lunch together, play games in the game rooms, and build friendships. We’re small enough that everyone knows everyone, so you don’t just interact with your immediate team.

Technically, Ampere is a place that gives people ownership and responsibility. Your work is important and impactful. We encourage mentorship to help people grow further in their careers.

Can you share a recent project you worked on and what you enjoyed about it?
I am currently working with a team of experienced and motivated engineers on developing Ampere’s first fully custom mesh interconnect. I really enjoy the technical challenges we are solving – new problems and interesting corner cases that require a deep understanding of the whole system and coordinating with many teams to get the right answer. My favorite part of this project has been working with the team; everyone brings passion, humor, and a shared goal to build the best product.

What impact does your work have on Ampere’s overall mission and goals?
I’m responsible for the architecture of the custom mesh IP, which connects all the SoC components to each other and memory. My work is enabling Ampere to build new and exciting products like AmpereOne® Aurora.

What do you enjoy outside of work?
I enjoy spending time with my wife and two children. I enjoy cooking (especially BBQ), gardening, and fixing up our old house. I’m also a car and train enthusiast – currently building a HO-gauge trainset in our basement with my kids. In my spare time, I play guitar and enjoy running.

Name: Vince Von Bokern
Office Location: Remote

How did you first learn about Ampere?
I was at Intel for many years when Renee James started Ampere. With the CEO being a former Intel executive and Ampere being a startup in the data center CPU space, I had my eye on Ampere from the very beginning.

What's the culture like at Ampere?
Ampere has a culture that’s all about data-driven problem solving, making quick decisions, and being open to input and ideas from everyone, no matter their grade level or seniority.

What does a typical day look like for you on the team?
There’s really is no “typical” day, which keeps things interesting in security architecture. Some days, I’m writing specifications to define features for a future product. I collaborate a lot with architects of various subsystems to establish security requirements and understand how security features impact each subsystem. Other times, I’m reviewing security advisories, research papers or tech press articles to see if Ampere’s products are affected by any identified vulnerabilities.

I also do code and implementation reviews with hardware, firmware and software developers, and meet with customers and partners to prioritize define, and enable security features. Most weeks also include some one-on-one meetings where I provide a bit of guidance and mentoring to team architects who will become Ampere’s next generation of leaders.

What impact does your work have on Ampere’s overall mission and goals?
My team’s work helps secure design wins by ensuring that Ampere products deliver the security features our customers need, with a quality level they trust. While Ampere’s main selling points are performance per watt and performance per rack, many of these security features are essential must-haves nowadays. Besides providing that security foundation, we’re also working on a few security features that offer strategic differentiation.

What do you enjoy outside of work?
I appreciate travel and any chance to get outdoors, especially hiking, running, and scuba diving. I also enjoy volunteering in teaching and tutoring roles. Over the years, this has included high school math tutoring and leading seminars on computer security and English as a second language.

And we are hiring 🙌🏼 — Now more than ever, the world needs a new level of predictable performance and efficiency as we look to build the modern cloud.

If that sounds of interest to you, join us at Ampere and work alongside a passionate and growing team: careers.amperecomputing.com