I’m helping a friend with his resume, and he uses the phrase “design in” as in “design in at xxx successfully”. Is “design-in” some English-language techno jargon or a phrase used only in Taiwan? Being 20 years behind the technology field, I could use some assistance.
I never heard it. Is xxx a place?
xxx is the customer (co. name). It’s supposed to mean something like the customer designs the product to fit your pdt’s specifications, but I don’t really get it. I looked it up and the definition I found is all in Chinese so I wondered if it was just a Taiwan usage of English. It talked about “design-in” vs. “design-win”, neither of which I have hear before. Help!
As far as I understand it is indeed some special term used at least in the electronics / IT business. A design win would be that a component (chip for example) vendor “wins” a design at a company that produces electronic goods.
For example: some company builds toasters. For their new “Fully Electronic Super Toasty 2011 Hello Kitty Edition” they need a toast time controller chip. Out of many available chips, they chose Company XYZ’s chip. So company XYZ claims in their news that they have a new design win.
Design-in to my understanding is similar, just not so sure. Maybe 3 chip vendors will claim to have a design-in for their chip into this toaster, but only one of them is chosen in the end, and can claim the design-win.
Generally chip vendors want to show off how many customers already use their chip, showing how good it is, and hoping to convince potential customers to also use it. That is where those terms normally would be used I think.
So the sentence “design in at xxx successfully” would mean, he succeeded to place one of his employers products (probably chips) at a customer’s design. The “successfully” might mean, it was a design-win in the end.
I’m always wary when I come across these off terms for the first time in the writings of my Taiwanese clients. I wonder if it’s real technical jargon or Taiglish like “cost down”.
Good point, but at least if it is related to IT, then probably Taiglish is very close to the “official technical Jargon”… methinks…
Thanks for taking time with the explanation, olm. I found “design-win” on the webopedia (is that a reliable source?) but no design-in definition in English. The Chinese is literally, “design into” (設計進去). So, now my question is, would a native English-speaker (not knowing Chinese) in the industry know this term? Way too curious for my own good, I can’t see how knowing this is going to help me, but now I just NEED to know.
Im in the industry and never heard of the term, or at least would have trouble understanding what was being said in the context you use.
I am in the IT industry and don’t hear that term often, if at all, either. So unless he was in a TW chip company and is going to apply in another, similar, TW chip company, maybe better spell out what it meant.
Are you sure it’s not a typo? Been in software/hardware for 10 years, including stints at Microsoft (software, hardware) and NVIDIA (strategy, chips), and speak a shit load of jargon. Never heard “Design in at ABC” ever. It’s not even proper English. But I’ve never worked in the TW hardware space.
“Design win” is often used to say how many products a particular chip has been chosen for. eg: “For the GT5000 chip, we have 10 laptop design wins for this quarter representing 20 million units of our chip.” Perhaps someone heard “design win” as “deeezine eeeen” and it turned into “design in”.
It’s crap Chingrish but don’t you dare change it! The Chairman’s son said it was correct.
Thanks for the feedback.
I found links like this
http://www.digitimes.com.tw/tw/dt/n/shwnws.asp?CnlID=10&id=0000132650_4JE7GGKL4881XA1ADO0MC
that talk about “design-in” meaning the design is complete and “design-win” meaning it the order was place, as far as I can make out. But, they are all in Chinese and nothing for design-in comes up in English.
He has a pretty specialised job in the chip industry which is disappearing over Chinese New Year, so he asked for some help with his resume. I’ll have to double-check with him tomorrow about his exact meaning on this one.
Google translate offers this for your link:
Design-in and Design-win
2009/05/07- 趙凱期 2009/05/07- of Zhao Kai
由於國內、外晶片供應商目前都傾向一次性提供包括晶片、軟體、韌體及公板的整體解決方案來給予客戶作選擇，在下游OEM及品牌客戶通常針對新產品開發案，都會先行採取開放競標的動作，讓所有晶片供應商同場競技。 As domestic and foreign chip suppliers now tend to provide a one-time, including chips, software, firmware, and public boards of the overall solution to give customers choice, OEM and branded customers in the downstream is usually the case for new product development, will first take an open competitive bidding action, play together all the chip vendors.
因此在新產品開發案初期，會有很多晶片供應商宣稱客戶已經[color=#BF0000]Design-in，[/color]其實就是拿到新產品開發案的入場券意思。 So early in the new product development, there will be a lot of chip vendors claim that customers have [color=#BF0000]Design-in,[/color] in fact, new product development to get tickets to mean. 到新產品開發案最後決定要採取特定晶片供應商的解決方案時，這時晶片供應商就會表示旗下晶片已經成功 Design-win，表示公司已順利贏得客戶訂單。 New product development to final decision to take a specific chip vendor solution, when its chip supplier, said the chip will have a successful [color=#0000BF]Design-win[/color], said the company has successfully won the customer orders.
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關鍵字 Keyword
設計完成(design-in) Design is completed ([color=#800000]design-in)[/color] 贏得訂單([color=#0000BF] desgin-win)[/color] To win orders color=#000080[/color]
It’s not helped much by the fact they mis-spell it!
it is indeed Chinglish jargon, and only used in Chinese text, so it would be best to find an alternative when translating.
My wife (a translator) describes it as such: when large companies manufacture new products, they will invite tenders from chip manufacturers. Those who have been invited to tender, once they have submitted a product design, can use the label “design-in” to describe their achievement. Once they have been awarded the contract, they can use the label “design-win”.