Computing Design Solutions
(CPU Peripherals, Graphics, Processors, etc.)
The proliferation of the Internet, including user demand for premium content and rich media, drives the need for greater performance in computing. Even with the recession of 2008-09, the computer market is still the largest segment for semiconductor products. This intensely competitive industry experiences rapid technological developments, changes in industry standards, changes in customer requirements, and frequent new product introductions and improvements.
Research and development efforts in computing applications focus on developing multiple generations of products concurrently, using independent design teams. Specialized groups consisting of architecture and algorithms, software engineering, IP development, and IC design engineering act as a pipeline designed to allow the efficient, simultaneous development of multiple generations of products. New-product development success demands the ability to organize R&D efforts to enable new levels of performance and address areas such as energy efficiency, system manageability, security, and ease of use.
Features and Benefits
Numetrics enterprise resource planning software (NMX-ERP) helps design managers and project leaders tackle and conquer these product-development challenges for IC and IP development and embedded software. Project scheduling with NMX-ERP provides a consistent methodology that enables better planning, realistic resource estimation, and improved schedule predictability.
NMX-ERP takes into consideration hundreds of design parameters along with unit information to quantify the IC product’s complexity. Using the NMX IC Industry Database™, project leaders can compare their IC project to similar projects within computing sub-segment such as microprocessor or peripherals. Project leaders can also benchmark the execution assumptions of their project plan with NMX IC Schedule Risk Analyzer™.
For example: The design manager of a high-end microprocessor or an advanced graphics processor can accurately describe units with a wide array of logic, processor and memory functions as well as quantify the specification, verification, and circuit reuse of those units. This capability of defining reuse allows the design manager to make tradeoffs between the purchase of IP or the reduction of features required to meet the product development window. Reuse bins, a unique feature of NMX-ERP, inspires internal debate over the challenges confronting a design team which leads to a robust assessment of risk.
Project leaders then use NMX IC Project Planner™ to perform quick and reliable ‘what-if’ analysis of the project dimensions—complexity, duration, staffing—as they strive to meet the schedule and resource demands of the computing-sector. Analysis of the entire development program (hardware and software) can be achieved with NMX Software Project Planner™ and NMX Program Viewer. Similar ‘what-if’ analysis can be performed on software projects while inter-project dependencies can be identified and evaluated using Program Viewer. Each tool provides further insight into development schedule risk providing the user with improved schedule predictability.
Whether it’s a compute-intensive IC design or a challenging embedded software implementation, Numetrics NMX-ERP provides the latest information in IC, IP, and embedded software design to enable project leaders to:
- Measure development productivity;
- Improve the predictability of development schedules;
- Quantify development schedule risk;
- Benchmark against the industry’s best-in-class.
Numetrics works with the top processor design organizations to continually validate its complexity calculation model. By taking into account such things as block frequency, reuse, and process maturity—and dozens of other parameters—the design director derives unparalleled insight into the project’s resource and schedule requirements.
Companies that fail to respond quickly and successfully to computing product development requirements may lose their competitive position, and their products or technologies may become uncompetitive or obsolete.
Resources
- Whitepaper: Criteria for Best-In-Class Design Teams
- Case study: NXP Bridges Engineering-Culture Divide to Drive Complex Software-Development Project on Predictable Schedule
Contact us: info@numetrics.com