Friday Sep. 05, 2008
One on One: Kunihiko Tsuboi
Next in our interview series, Kunihiko Tsuboi offers a Japanese perpective on the IP marketplace.
Kunihiko Tsuboi has joined in Sony cooperation since 1978. He worked on VLSI process development, and mask data preparation system. Since 2002 he also has worked for STARC (Semiconductor Technology Academic Research Centor), where he worked on IP reuse system development, and he has been in charge of Mixed-Signal design group since 2004.
Tsuboi-san,
Thank you for taking the time to discuss IP from the Japanese market perspective.
1. What you believe is the biggest challenge for your company and IP companies?
As a product company we need the required IP’s to design a SoC. Time to Market is the most important issue for IP vendors.
2. Putting the shoe on the other foot, what do you perceive the IP customer’s # 1 challenge and what should they be doing about it?
The quality! So VIP (Verification IP) is getting very important. If we have a right VIP, a half of IP development will be completed.
3. The IP business model undergoes periodic attack from the media, do you think the IP business model is broken? Please elaborate.
It is not fixed yet. We have to find well-suited business model among users, vendors, developers and maintenance engineers.
4. The IP market is dominated (revenue-wise) by a few large players, yet there remains hundreds of small outfits. Why is that?
We need technology based small vendors for specific application. The common IP like USB are for large vendors. We need so called coopetition (cooperation and competition), I believe.
5. Should there be more or less IP companies?
Yes, I suppose so.
6. What role should EDA companies play in the IP market?
IP distribution, and to support EDA environment to embed IP’s easily.
7. What role should Service companies play in the IP market?
Another big issue. We need trouble shooting as soon as possible with reasonable cost.
8. To what extent do you think the IP industry has come to grips with its quality issues?
We also need the precise specification. To describe the precise specification is also important.
9. Is there a need for greater standardization in IP?
Yes.
10. Ten years from now, what does the IP market look like?
Definitely getting bigger, but we have to improve a lot of things like quality, business model, EDA environments, standardization and so on.
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About the Author
Warren Savage, President and CEO of IPextreme, is a well-known and published authority in the field of semiconductor intellectual property.
He has a long history of pushing the envelope of design methodology from his work in fault tolerant computing at Tandem Computers in the 1980's and driving reliable design metholologies into commercial practice at Synopsys for its DesignWare IP product in the 1990s.
Much of his thinking became embodied in the seminal book on IP reuse, the Reuse Methodology Manual. Warren is taking his vision to the next level with his latest company, IPextreme, which is focused on enabling broad commercialization of IP captive in large semiconductor companies.
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