Discussions about R&D return-on-investment (RoI) among semiconductor industry executives often turn to engineering productivity. They’re often surprised when I assert that productivity isn’t that important—at least as far as R&D performance metrics are concerned. A far more important metric is engineering throughput. [More]

Bad news: Steadily declining IC development productivity means more job losses for engineers employed in first-world economies—e.g. U.S. and Europe. Those lost jobs are going to second-world economies because labor costs are much lower. Moreover, the trend is accelerating as chip design complexity outpaces gains in productivity. Don’t shoot the messenger for the message. [More]