As electronic design becomes more complex and divides into increasingly esoteric sub-specialties, new opportunities arise for "re-integration" to bring all the
outsourcing back together into a logical and efficient development flow. In fact,
re-integration was one of the salient themes of this year's Semico Summit.
Electronic Design was pleased to be media sponsor of
this year's conference, held last month in Phoenix, and
attending gave me a chance to gain the perspective of
some of the top executives in the semiconductor market. Since you readers are busy creating tomorrow's
technology, I thought I'd recap some of the 40,000-foot perspective passed down at the summit.
WHAT'S NEXT IN WIRELESS
Behrooz Abdi of
Qualcomm CDMA technologies said that the next generation of multimedia phones will process graphics at 4 million triangles per second (the equivalent of the Sony PlayStation 1) and will have as many as 15 different radios inside. Atheros Communications CTO William McFarland agreed that combining wireless solutions like Bluetooth/Wi-Fi via protocol layer
crossovers will increase function while reducing overall size and
lowering system cost.
But McFarland also predicted that Wi-Fi would continue to
dominate wireless, likely winning out in some application areas
now targeted by newer niche technologies. For example, Wi-Fi
will allow for true mesh networks with 802.11s, giving the technology an advantage in the wide-area networking space, he said.
In fact, Semico predicts the number of cities introducing municipal Wi-FI networks to increase by eightfold by 2010.
"Dis-integrated" design specialization also drives a continued
move to fabless manufacturing and consolidation in the high-stakes world of multibillion-dollar foundries. Mentor Graphics'
CEO Wally Rhines said manufacturing processes will become
less of a differentiator for most chip makers. Going forward, most
companies will focus on system architectural innovation and proprietary intellectual property (IP), as well as on implementation
efficiencies that can mean higher manufacturing yield, even
when utilizing the same foundries as the competition.
Cadence CEO Mike Fister said the dis-aggregation of design
into many segments means the EDA market has to develop a
holistic approach that can cross the entire design flow, particularly for critical areas like power reduction and for verification
management. He advocated a "virtual reaggregation" that lets
designers leverage outside R&D and manufacturing while building a flow that works across the wider supply chain.
The ratcheting up of system-on-a-chip (SoC) design complexity
ensures a continued move to outsourced IP development. Sonics CEO Grant Pierce outlined the cost and time-to-market advantages of outsourcing the interconnect architecture (Sonics'
specialty). His statistics showed that outsourced IP
can improve design productivity by 25%.
John Bourgoin, CEO of MIPS Technologies, said
software design is now 50% of the cost of SoC
development and growing, with the number of software developers expanding while the number of hardware designers stays relatively flat. Jack Harding, CEO of
eSilicon, said his company's whole focus is on re-aggregation—organizing all the outsourced services that must come
together to coordinate today's complex designs.
Actel CEO John East emphasized power design as a unifying
factor in a world of shrinking geometries. He pointed to four
"breakthroughs" that have helped avert a power density "train
wreck": low-K materials, strained silicon, high K (hafnium, still in
the lab), and the move to multicore processors. Still, says East,
designers haven't cared as much about power as they should.
He also said that future design will require a concerted effort
around power, or there will be "a lot of trouble."
THE NEW SPACE RACES
Solving these re-integration challenges takes a lot of brainpower, and National Semiconductor
CEO Brian Halla's keynote addressed the need to get U.S. government involved in supporting and maintaining national technology leadership.
The "real issues" in the U.S., Halla said, are energy, health
care, and security. Technology can solve these issues, he said,
suggesting that government must invest in research and technology with the same level of urgency that drove the space race—
and spawned the birth of the semiconductor industry.
Meanwhile, no one is doing more for future tech leadership
than Dean Kamen and his FIRST robotics competition. I took my
kids to see the regional championship in New York City, and they
loved it. Kamen has found a great way to bring the drama of
sports to an engineering competition.
In this issue's Industry Techview, Ron Schneiderman
looks at how electronics companies are supporting the FIRST
cause. The national FIRST championships are this week in
Atlanta, and our robotics specialist Bill Wong will be there. Tune
in to EngineeringTV.com to see the battling robots—and the
young faces of our engineering future.