Big Data, the Cloud and the Internet of (Silicon) Things

Next week, eSilicon are kicking off a very widespread survey to measure some important semiconductor design and manufacturing challenges. Their goal is to measure customer sentiment regarding how Big Data, the Cloud and the Internet can impact these challenges. But here’s a secret, the survey is already live and you can go and fill it in right now.

I went through the survey (I didn’t finally submit it since my “latest design” was a blog post stored in the cloud on the internet but didn’t involve any silicon design). The survey is 22 questions long and will take 5-10 minutes to complete. And there are prizes! You’ll be entered to win one of five $100 Amazon gift certificates (or they will donate $100 to the Red Cross if you prefer).

After asking you about the technology of your last design, eSilicon get onto what factors were difficult. Embedded software, quality/stability of project inputs, power closure, performance, yield management, area, IP bugs, test, packaging, and so on.

Next, on to business challenges such as time to market, production leadtimes, production cost, mask tooling cost and more.

The heart of the survey is how you want to see big data, the cloud and the internet leveraged in semiconductor design and manufacturing processes.

I won’t run through all the questions. After all, you should really go over there and read them all and fill in your answers. The more data collected the more useful the responses will be.

But question 18 is interesting. It asks which channels are most important for keeping you informed about semiconductor design and manufacturing. Newsletters, magazines, vendor websites, social media, conferences; and which ones. And of course blogs. This question should clearly be answered SemiWiki, although I might just be biased.

The rubric from eSilicon says: Over the last 14 years eSilicon has optimized ASIC designs and accelerated time-to-market for our customers. Using our deep design and manufacturing experience, plus customizable IP, we’ve successfully delivered almost 200 million chips across 170+ customer designs. We’re working on a wide range of exciting designs today.

We’ve always leveraged database and Internet technologies to automate our business, resulting in a more transparent, predictable and reliable experience for our customers. We see Big Data and the Cloud playing important roles going forward. We want to know what you think, to better understand your needs and ensure that our Big Data, Cloud and Internet of (Silicon) Things strategies are aligned.

Your answers will be kept in confidence and your responses to our questions will not be used to try to sell you anything.

The link to the survey is here.

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