Big changes are occurring before our eyes in the semiconductor world. And while you might say that the industry always has been in a state of flux, understanding the nature of today’s changes is key; reacting properly to that understanding is imperative.

What’s new? In short, it’s a shift in focus: The long transition toward the fabless model is almost complete. With the numbers of semiconductor companies doing their own manufacturing dwindling to a handful, the time has come for executives and engineering managers to figure out where their differentiation now lies within their companies.

Manufacturing used to be one of those differentiators. But today, with everyone buying manufacturing services from TSMC, UMC, Chartered or other foundries, there’s very little differentiation in how ICs are manufactured. But there can be enormous differentiation and value in how they’re designed.

How is this possible, in a world of well-established design-automation tools and methodologies? One approach is to bring more predictability and productivity to design projects and teams; to help engineering managers get insightful, relevant data early in the design decision-making process; and to enable a portfolio of designs to be centrally managed efficiently. That’s our business, and it’s a topic I’ll explore in detail this Wednesday (Sept. 16) during EE Times’ SoC Virtual Conference.

I’ll be presenting on a panel (Economics of Next-Generation SOC Design: A Node Too Far? 2-3 p.m. PDT) with Grant Martin, chief scientist, Tensilica; Steve Douglass, vice president, product development, Xilinx; and Sven Andersson, ASIC FPGA designer, Realtime Embedded AB. The panel will be moderated by EE Times’ Online Editor Dylan McGrath.

If you want a peek at some of what will inform my presentation, take a look at our Numetrics solutions page for starters. And then think about the implications of these two statistics:

* 60 percent of IC projects slip at least one quarter.

* 16 percent of IC projects slip more than one year.

I hope to see you live Wednesday during the virtual panel!

Related posts:

1. For Semiconductor Companies, a New Focus on Differentiation (Summary: For semiconductor companies, differentiation has shifted from manufacturing...
2. Why Most Semiconductor Design Projects Slip Schedule (Summary: More than 80 percent of semiconductor projects slip schedule,...
3. IC Teams Tend to Underestimate SOC Development Costs By Ron Collett Underestimating the complexity of an SOC semiconductor...

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