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Business Articles

• ASICs Bring Back Control to Supply Chains (Feb. 08, 2024)
  OEMs must take back control of supply chains and consider taking an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuits) route, using cost-effective custom silicon designs, which can give back the flexibility, visibility, stability and resilience that supply chains need.
  
  
• Upskill Your Smart Soldiers and Conquer the ChipWar in Style! (Jul. 21, 2023)
  My recent article, ‘Chip War without Soldiers’ explained the importance of upskilling and preparing the chip design workforce in this current scenario, and it also explained how it will lead to ‘Fabs without Chips’ if we don’t prioritize it. VLSI Engineers are the pillars of the semiconductor industry, and they can only transform our industry into a trillion-dollar industry with their inventions and innovations.
  
  
• Chip War without Soldiers (May. 12, 2023)
  Every country realizes the importance of producing skilled chip designers who could decide their success as soldiers by creating advanced AI chips for winning the Chip War. Also, every country is now gearing up to build a good semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem to balance the global semiconductor supply chain that could overcome any more supply chain disruptions experienced during the pandemic.
  
  
• Stop-For-Top IP model to replace One-Stop-Shop by 2025... and support the creation of successful Chiplet business (Jun. 20, 2022)
  The One-Stop-Shop model has allowed IP vendors of the 2000’s to create a successful IP business, mostly driven by consumer application, smartphone or Set-Top-Box. The industry has dramatically changed, and in 2020 is now driven by data-centric application (datacenter, AI, networking, HPC…), requiring best-inclass, high performance IP developed on bleeding edge technology nodes.
  
  
• eFPGA Saved Us Millions of Dollars. It Can Do the Same for You (Feb. 10, 2022)
  For those of you who follow Flex Logix®, you already know that we have an IP business, EFLX® eFGPA, and an edge inferencing co-processor chip and board business, InferX®. InferX came about because we had many customers ask if they can run AI/ML algorithms in EFLX.
  
  
• The Thriving Silicon IP Business (Apr. 06, 2020)
  It wasn’t all that long ago when becoming a third-party silicon intellectual property (IP) provider was all the rage in the electronic system design (ESD) community. Engineers with a laptop could sit in their home office or garage, design a functional block of IP, and voila, they were in the IP business.
  
  
• Lowering Barriers to Entry for ASICs (Oct. 26, 2017)
  This paper will explore the different ways in which companies are building chips that reduce cost, space, power, while adding features, and protecting the designer’s IP.
  
  
• The end of the smartphone era: What will be the technology battlegrounds of the next decade? (Nov. 17, 2016)
  For the past decade, the smartphone race has been the main arena in which technology gladiators battled for domination. Now that Android accounts for over 87% of 2016 smartphones shipments (iOS accounts for only ~12%), we can declare the smartphone platform war is over.
  
  
• Design trade-offs for product development (Sep. 23, 2014)
  This article seeks to explore some of the key trade-offs made when designing a product, with reference to the software and electronic design aspects. It focuses primarily on the commercial and time implications of these decisions.
  
  
• A Win-Win Royalty Deal Structure in IP Business (Jul. 28, 2014)
  Royalty is a critical component in any IP deal. SoC companies want IP companies to share the risk of success (or failure) of their SoC and to enable that they want IP vendors to accept a substantial part of their payment to be paid as royalty. But the customers are also not very interested to shell out huge money to IP companies if the SoC is successful and hence they would like to have the royalty percentage as much as low which IP companies find non-acceptable in several situations.
  
  
• Perceptual Mapping for Newly Developed 3rd Party IP (Jun. 09, 2014)
  This paper emphasizes the challenge and opportunities in the evaluation of new IPs being developed by 3rd Party vendor. Author suggests Perceptual Mapping technic for deciding the vendor offerings and project need. Also suggest some of the risk mitigations for a successful integration of the 3rd Party IP into the ASIC/SOC product.
  
  
• Application of Option in Semiconductor IP Business Strategy (Oct. 28, 2013)
  Option is a financial instruments which gives right to buy or sell of an asset at a pre-determined price at the end of a specified time period (European option) or anytime within a specified time period (American option). To get this right a trader needs to pay a certain amount which is called option price. We can use this option pricing model to decide on different business strategies in IP business.
  
  
• Semiconductor industry strengths and weaknesses in the Asia Pacific region (Jul. 30, 2013)
  As the semiconductor industry transitions to smaller process geometries, the transformation is affecting competitiveness of manufacturers in Japan, Korea, and China.
  
  
• Using 3rd Party IP in ASIC/SoC Design (Feb. 04, 2013)
  3rd Party IP has become a buzz word since the Semiconductor industry has shifted gears to Fab-lite and eventually to Design-lite models in last few years. The new business models have opened the doors in many companies to overcome some of the internal weakness about possessing any IPs/design competencies to do a next generation ASIC/SoC designs. There have been multiple debates about which and to what extent should a company look into 3rd party IP. This paper outlines some best practices for using the ecosystem as well as some of the common challenges in integrating and using 3rd Party IPs in today’s high-end ASIC/SoCs.
  
  
• Shaking up the design services market a la Amazon (Dec. 03, 2012)
  Just as Amazon shook up the world of retail, an enterprising entrepreneur could come along and upend the world of design services, a market segment that needs a good shake up.
  
  
• SoCs: Unsung heroes of the smartphone revolution (Feb. 13, 2012)
  There was a time just a few short years ago when the smartphone was considered a niche product and the convergence between voice, data and video merely wishful thinking
  
  
• What's new in the Semiconductor IP market? The case of civilian Aerospace industry (Jun. 13, 2011)
  It exists an industry where the usage of IP is not yet developed : The Civilian Aerospace industry. After an introduction of the different advantages of IP usage, this paper will deal with difficulties to overcome to access to this wide pool of resources which are Semiconductor IPs.
  
  
• What’s the number of ASIC versus FPGA design starts? (Mar. 21, 2011)
  One often sees articles that say things like ‘In 2010 there were 2,500 ASIC design starts versus 90,000 FPGA design starts.’ But where do these numbers actually come from and how accurate are they?
  
  
• STOP! Are You Gambling On Your Memory IP? (Mar. 04, 2011)
  Kilopass and Sidense both license OTP memory IP. These companies are currently in litigation with each other with regard to allegations of patent infringement. Why should you be interested? Well, if you are building a new chip and you are licensing memory IP, you really need to have a high level of confidence that the IP you are licensing does not violate someone else's patents.
  
  
• Key factors for success in dealing with Asian fabs (Feb. 28, 2011)
  This article is about managing relationships with Asian semiconductor foundries through the understating of the socio-business-cultural (SBC) environment. Since Taiwan, China, Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia host the major foundries, this article gives a good insight into the factors important for fabless/fablite companies to be successful.
  
  
• Innovation led Business Models for IP's in Product Engineering (Nov. 15, 2010)
  Innovation involves two essentially different activities – coming up with a new idea and creating a market out of it. There is no need for the same organization to do both.
  
  
• Time to market is a critical consideration (Mar. 01, 2010)
  Being first is key, unless you can be substantially better. Being third means being out of luck.
  
  
• 6 steps for optimizing the IC supply chain (Aug. 12, 2009)
  Semiconductor downturns are invariably followed by upturns and so the next growth cycle will come even as we discuss macroeconomics and debate exact timing. What is more important is for companies to take stock and evaluate where they are on the supply chain journey, identify critical gaps and take corrective actions in time. Is your supply chain ready for the next industry growth cycle?
  
  
• From IP re-use to open Innovation - A new trend in the industry (Jun. 01, 2009)
  The purpose of this article is to show that beyond IP reuse a new trend is taking shape in the industry: Open Innovation. More than IP, companies now shares ideas which become the basis of their new product. A short description of the Procter&Gamble case will give a better understanding of this model. Some other examples in the high tech industry illustrate implementation of this model. Even if very appealing there is some important challenges around Open Innovation that new adopters have to be well aware.
  
  
• EDA 3.0: So you are an EDA startup? (Mar. 19, 2009)
  A lot has been written and said in the last few months about the state of the EDA (Electronic Design Automation) industry and how to grow it. Less has been said about EDA startups, their challenges, and growth opportunities.
  
  
• Viewpoint: Competitive Advantage vs. Collaborative Advantage (Jan. 22, 2009)
  Companies should begin to evaluate the ration between competitive and collaborative advantages.
  
  
• Open source in consumer electronics: What, why and how (Nov. 06, 2008)
  This article looks at the motives behind open source, explains where open source is (and isn't) succeeding, and reveals Texas Instruments' thinking on Linux and the Open Handset Alliance (OHA).
  
  
• A Different Path to IP Success: A Decade-Plus Delivering Cores the CAST Way (Mar. 27, 2008)
  CAST, Inc. is a small, pioneering provider of IP products that is still thriving despite repeated predictions of doom for such firms. This paper describes some of the unorthodox yet effective principles followed by CAST management, employees, and partners over the past 14 years.
  
  
• Identify your real IP (Mar. 03, 2008)
  You can't guard your intellectual property if you don't know what it is.
  
  
• IP licensing fosters design flexibility (Nov. 21, 2007)
  Emerging automotive electronics design model "decouples" supplier choice from technology choice, while advancing industry standards