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How China can Lead in the Semiconductor Industry

How China can Lead in the Semiconductor Industry
by Pawan Fangaria on 03-06-2016 at 8:00 pm
Categories: EDA, Foundries

Since a few years China has been very aggressive in acquiring semiconductor companies around the world. Last year, Chinese government along with PE (Private Equity) and other investors in China announced an ambitious plan under which more than $150 billion were to be invested over next 5 to 10 years in developing semiconductor technology, in-house and by acquisitions from outside. The rationale for doing this is valid for making China self-reliant in semiconductor technology; 90% of China’s semiconductor chip consumption relies on imports from outside.

Between 2013 and mid 2015, China acquired multiple semiconductor companies including Spreadtrum, STATS ChipPAC, ISSI, OmniVision, Montage Technology, and also acquired stakes in other global companies. In 2015, Micron’s acquisition by China’s Tsinghua Unigroup was proposed for $23 billion; however that did not succeed. Also, Fairchild’s acquisition by ‘China Resources Holding’ failed due to concerns about US federal regulation. Similarly, Chinese institutions’ attempts to buy stakes in Western Digital, SK Hynix, MediaTek, and others fell apart due to political backlash and other reasons.

China’s goal is to become a driving force in the semiconductor industry by 2030, technologically as well as in business terms with most of the semiconductor demand by Chinese domestic electronic industry met by internal production within China. In my opinion, China’s aspiration to lead in the semiconductor industry cannot be accomplished by mere acquisitions. They will have to establish their technological as well as business leadership. They have a great potential in doing so, provided they gradually build a leading culture in several aspects of semiconductors. Here are the steps that can be taken –

Innovate In-house

China should develop an innovative culture in companies within the country as well as their subsidiaries around the world. They must spend sizable amount of money in R&D for chip design and fabrication. They have innovative design companies such as HiSilicon in communication network and media applications. Also, SMIC is a leading semiconductor foundry in .35 micron to 28 nm technology. These companies can be seeded for further innovation and expansion of current and future technologies.

Also, there are experienced technologists of Chinese origin working in other countries. They can be attracted to lead the innovation in China. Besides, R&D centres can be opened in other countries to attract top talent there and innovate for China.

Technical collaboration with top semiconductor companies can lead to innovation too. Intel’s investment in Tsinghua Unigroup for development of mobile chips by its group companies Spreadtrum and RDA Microelectronics is an opportunity to excel in mobile technology. Similarly, collaboration with Qualcomm in server chip development can unleash innovation in China.

Build Technology Leadership


China is improving in terms of wafer capacity. SMIC has both 300 mm and 200 mm fabs. According to an IC Insights report, China’s wafer capacity surpassed that of Europe in 2010. However, at 9.7% of worldwide wafer capacity, it’s at 5[SUP]th[/SUP] rank. Considering China’s domestic consumption, there is good scope for investment in fabs to increase the wafer capacity according to the country’s requirement.

China is a good base for manufacturing of electronic items with imported semiconductor chips. While it improves on manufacturing of chips in-house, it also needs to usher into indigenously designing ASICs and high-end chips such as processors in-house. The cost advantage of manufacturing laptops, smartphones, TVs, and other electronic items in China is no more attractive. Hence China must upgrade its workforce to design and manufacture complex chips as well.

The hard part is to find a gap in the semiconductor industry and fill it to become an undisputed leader. In the past, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have done it.


In 1980s, Japan was the initiator of ramping up the IC manufacturing when global GDP was moderated to ~3% from a high of 5.4% in 1960s. And in 1990s, when global GDP was at a low between 2.7% and 2.6%, the IC growth was negatively correlated with GDP. At that time, Taiwan ushered in pure-play foundry model to fulfil the manufacturing demand from fabless design companies. Also South Korea ramped up its IC production. South Korea was top wafer provider till 2014. At the end of 2015, Taiwan became the top wafer capacity holder at 21.7% of total global wafer capacity.

Unfortunately, today the semiconductor market has matured and there is no visible large gap to fill in there. However, China can still look forward to lead in upcoming areas such as IoT and automotive related chipsets and software. Also, power efficient and high performance server chips need innovation, and can offer big business opportunity for big-data management. In anyway, China will need to first build a base for indigenous technology development and then take up business leadership from its home ground.

Improve Business Outlook

China has been largely viewed as a local market for electronic products with local standards and low-prices. That’s fine considering China’s large domestic consumption, however in order to catch up with global leaders, China will have to break out of that mode. It will have to consistently adhere to global standards. The standard products that are exported out of the country comply with global standards, but that should apply broadly to all products.

In order to serve the global community, China will have to make major improvements in its business practices. Often China is perceived as a provider of low-quality products at cheap prices; duplicity, piracy, and security often emerge as other concerns. This perception about China along with global political concerns seems to have played in the failure of some of China’s acquisitions. To achieve a global footprint in the semiconductor industry, China will have to work hard to remove these perceptions. These perceptions may be right or wrong, but an inward review of business practices and improvement in those can create a better perception about China. This can help China in building better partnership with global leaders with a greater sense of confidence and responsibility for sharing of technologies.

Improve Operational Efficiency

China’s workforce has not remained cheap as earlier, however the manufacturing of electronic products is largely based on assembly of components where profit margin is shrinking gradually. In order to keep pace with ROI, China will have to upgrade the skills of its workforce and move them to higher value-added jobs such as designing of complex SoCs, complete systems, specialized chips for automotive components, development of embedded software, etc. And of course fabrication of semiconductor chips of all types.

In other industries such as steel and coal, Chinese government has initiated efforts to shut down loss making factories and mines. This is the right time to streamline electronic industry as well towards higher value-added development to compete in global market which can pay higher dividends to China.

Channelizing all of these efforts at the ground level will require more investment and provide minimum or no return in the short term. However, such an investment on companies and people within the country will bring organic expansion in the long run. Chinese government and private equity investors will have to be patient enough for long to see an everlasting leadership emerge from within the country.

More Articles from Pawan

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Ajoy – History, Perspectives and Crossing the Chasm

Ajoy – History, Perspectives and Crossing the Chasm
by Bernard Murphy on 03-06-2016 at 4:00 pm
Categories: EDA, Synopsys

EDAC hosted an event at DVCon this week where Jim Hogan interviewed Ajoy Bose (CEO of Atrenta prior to its acquisition by Synopsys). The nominal purpose was to talk about turning a venture into a valuable enterprise. This was covered but, in Jim’s way, it was really a more wide-ranging and personal interview. This is an abstract of some highlights.

Personal and Background
Ajoy grew up in India with engineering in his veins (his father was a metallurgical engineer). He studied electrical engineering and programming at IIT Kanpur, one of the top engineering schools, then moved to Texas where he did his graduate studies at UT Austin under Steve Szygenda on topics related to the Tegas simulator. At UT he fell in love with barbeque and became and remains to this day a serious football fan (hence the SpyGlass User Group meetings at Levi Stadium).

From UT he went to Bell Labs, back in the day when that organization was a leader not just in electronics and telecommunications but also in fundamental science. He worked for Hermann Gummel, whose team innovated in many areas in EDA (Ajoy introduced me to another member of the team, Larry Nagel, who invented Spice).

As the Bell System was broken up, Ajoy decided to move to Gateway Design Automation as VP of engineering. Shortly afterwards Gateway was acquired by Cadence where he became the VP of engineering for front-end tools. He mentioned that even before the acquisition, Gateway had been concerned about VHDL momentum and had been debating making Verilog an open standard. Within days after the acquisition that decision was finalized and the language was donated to OVI/Accellera. This got Verilog momentum going again, but Ajoy stressed that what really made Verilog successful was focus on a simple HDL, obsessive focus on speed and grinding away at features and functions required to make the product acceptable to customer needs.

In the early 90’s Ajoy, feeling after working in big companies that he wanted to start a small company, launched Software and Technologies with Prabhu Goel. Outsourcing was becoming big in those days so they built an operation to deliver contract services, executed primarily in India with a US front-end. The team built library models, delay calculators, parsers and more. All this was bootstrapped with careful cash-flow management and had no need for external funding.

In 1995 Ajoy started his own independent company, Interra, to provide similar services, again bootstrapped thanks to immediate cash flow and liquidity. He reinvested extra cash in areas diversified beyond EDA/design including digital video services, e-business and IT services. Several of these are still operating today. Those were good times, not easily reproducible in the current climate, when Interra was effectively a holding company and he could be his own VC.

Atrenta
Around 2000, Interra started a project with a large semiconductor company looking for some of the Interra parsers on which they could build reusability checks for RTL. Ajoy talked them into a deal in which we would build the checker they wanted but also retain rights to the product (I had joined the company a couple of months earlier). That product became SpyGlass and we were able to sell it in quick succession to 4-5 companies. Ajoy felt the product had momentum and scalability so spun Atrenta out of Interra as an independent company and raised venture funding.

Back in those days, VCs were still interested; an EDA company could go public at $20M in revenue with 2-3 profitable quarters. Ajoy needed funding to scale up sales bandwidth – we got it on the value proposition that reuse was hot and we already had a proven solution.

Then came the dot-com bust; reuse was no longer hot and the value prop had to be reworked to a must-have need. The IPO bar rose and kept on rising. There was the Great Recession in 2008, then VCs lost interest in emerging companies that didn’t have billion dollar valuations. Ajoy slogged through it all, adapting the company and the product vision as market needs changed. Fortunately he saw and adapted to changes that were close to where we started:

  • Shrinking technology nodes adding new problems
  • IP-based design of large SoCs by distributed design teams
  • Testability and high test coverage becoming issues that needed to be considered pre-synthesis
  • Increasing use of multiple interfaces with different clock frequencies increased domain crossing challenges
  • Power was becoming more important – estimation, checking intent and optimizing power

Within the last few years it became fairly obvious that Atrenta was developing the revenue, market control and level of profitability that made it a likely target for acquisition. Last year, Synopsys took that step and folded the Atrenta product line largely into VG (some parts went to DG). Ajoy said that he had always wanted to build a reasonable sized EDA company that left a mark on the industry. I think we can all agree that, despite a bumpy road, he succeeded admirably.

Advice
Asked to who he attributed his growth and success, Ajoy said first Hermann Gummel, his manager at Bell Labs, and subsequently Mike Hackworth who was an independent (non-VC) board member. Mike ran large organizations in Signetics and was CEO of Cirrus for many years; he is credited with starting the fabless business (he is sadly no longer with us). He had huge experience and credibility in building and running a successful startup and transitioning it to and running it as a public business. Jim commented that sometimes good startups fail because the board doesn’t work. Bringing Mike’s experience to the board provided Ajoy with an independent advisor and kept the money guys in line.

Technically, the common platform to check across power, cdc, test, lint and so on was a big advantage, reducing development costs and ease of adoption by customers already using some aspects of the product. We all hate having to learn new tools – the more functionality you can provide in a unified use-model the lower that resistance will be. And an obsessive focus with ease of use for casual users was important. Static verification is famous for noisy output. Reducing this, simplifying review, providing summary reports for managers, all were important in driving adoption.

Ajoy also advised that you never get it quite right when you start. You need to be willing to recognize trends and opportunities and adapt when appropriate. Atrenta started with simple reuse “grading” but adapted successfully to the growth of IP reuse which raised new and challenging requirements unrelated to best practices as originally envisioned.

He added that in almost all cases you will face a visionary/missionary sell – even though you “get it”, you shouldn’t expect anyone else will, or that they will see the same value that you do. You have to communicate, you have to run campaigns and you have to keep polishing your story, constantly.

Questions from the audience
Did Atrenta invent Lint?No, lint was already around for C. For HDLs, Verilint and Leda were around before SpyGlass.

Atrenta has been international from day 1 with R&D centers around the world. What’s the secret in making this work?Ajoy’s experience started with Cadence and grew with S&T and Interra. There’s been a lot of maturing of the model across the industry, not just in Atrenta. In Atrenta, the management team is due a lot of credit for making this work well.

Atrenta grew mostly organically with only one acquisition. Is this the best way?The SpyGlass platform was a strength but would have made integration of independently-developed products more challenging. However, as revenue targets continued to grow, eventually we would have had to look at further acquisitions. If Ajoy was going to do it over again he might instead have optimized for an early sale. Building a big company is expensive and hard. Both Jim and Ajoy suggested for most ventures an early exit was greatly preferable to bulking up.

Any other advice?Be careful about what products you get into. It is very easy to get to having lots of products, many with questionable (or negative) return, then finding it difficult to back out of commitments. Small is beautiful and quick is beautiful. Be ruthless about pruning.

Why did Verilog win over VHDL in the market?Phill Moorby had built two simulators before Verilog so knew what to do and what not to do. And he spent a lot of time optimizing performance, sometimes at the cost of other things (like event-ordering) which eventually had to be cleaned up. Which may also suggest some interesting advice – sometimes prioritizing fast over absolutely correct (an engineering heresy) can be the right choice.

What will happen with EDA in next five years?Five years is a short window. Semiconductor companies really have to work through their role(s) in the market first (before clarity for EDA will emerge). The honest answer is who knows? That said, chip design still depends very much on EDA and always will.

Ajoy the Person
At the end of it all, we are measured not just by what we accomplish in technology and business, but also the impression we leave on others. We can only hope we do as well in this department as Ajoy.

Jim runs a charitable organization called the Heart of Technology which helps kids at risk. He stressed that thanks to Ajoy’s direct involvement, Atrenta has always sponsored the organization and Ajoy has always written a personal check. Ajoy and the company have also been actively involved in multiple charities, especially the Second Harvest Food Bank.

I have worked with Ajoy for nearly 20 years and can attest that he is one of the kindest, highest integrity and most loyal people you could hope to work with. This isn’t just my perspective. I have heard the same opinion echoed by many people within the company and across the industry. I wish him luck in whatever he does next.

More articles by Bernard…

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IC Design and OpenAccess

IC Design and OpenAccess
by Daniel Payne on 03-06-2016 at 12:00 pm
Categories: EDA

EDA vendors have long used proprietary file and database formats to keep their users locked into their specific tool flow and keep any competitors from sharing in the IC design process. Along the way the actual users of EDA tools have often requested and helped to create interoperable flows so that they could mix and match multiple EDA vendor tools into a cohesive flow or sub-flow. Way back in 1999 something called the OpenAccess coalition was formed when Cadence offered their database and API as a starting point to share. Using an API to access the database made it easer for other EDA vendors to read and write IC information without having to know the details of the database itself, or continue to use their own database.

Lots of EDA vendors and users got behind this idea of OpenAccess, like: Agilent Technologies, Altera, AMD, AnaGlobe Technology, ANSYS, Atrenta, AWR Corporation, Cadence, D2S, Dolphin Integration, Entasys Design, Fractal Technologies, HP, Huada Empyrean Software, IBM, Intel, Invarian, Jedat, MatrixOne, Mentor Graphics, Micro Magic, Oracle, PDF Solutions, Gmbh, Pulsic Limited, Qualcomm, R3 Logic, Samsung Electronics, SiliconBlue Technologies, Silvaco, Synopsys, TSMC, Tanner Research, Teklatech, Tela Innovations, Texas Instruments, and Zuken. This API comes in more than one programming language too: C++, C#, Perl, Python, Ruby and Tcl.


Let’s say that you work in a large IC design company and another group has used Cadence IC tools to create some cells and blocks, but your group is using Silvaco IC tools and you want to re-use those cells and blocks. How would you do that? With OpenAccess the process is straight forward, because Silvaco has a schematic capture tool called Gateway and a layout editor named Expert, both tools are OpenAccess compatible. There’s a webinarfrom Silvaco that will walk you through this IC design portability issue on March 17th, from 10:00AM to 11:00AM PST.

Here’s the agenda for the webinar:

  • What is OpenAccess
  • Differences between oPDK and iPDK
  • How to use OpenAccess in the Silvaco custom design environment
  • Key challenges
    • Inter-operability
    • Differences between PDK types

Process Design Kits (PDK) are created by the foundry for use by EDA tools and in the early days the foundries would have to create a unique PDK for each of the major EDA vendor tools, requiring a lot of time and duplicating a lot of valuable engineering effort. Several years ago an industry standardization effort took shape around Interoperable PDKs, dubbed iPDK. Here’s what a PDK looks like with OpenAccess:


PDK with OpenAccess

Historically the EDA industry tends to adopt multiple standards for the same thing, so sure enough we also have OpenPDK started by Si2 and EDA vendors. At the webinar you’ll learn about the differences between OpenPDK and iPDK,

The webinar presenter from Silvaco is Brian Bradburn and he’s been in the software industry for 20 years, at Silvaco for the past 15 years and he heads up the front-end/back-end division. I’ll be attending this webinar and blogging about what I learn, so stay tuned for the details.

Webinar Registration
To attend this webinar requires a short registration process online here.

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Dr. Walden Rhines on the Past Present and Future!

Dr. Walden Rhines on the Past Present and Future!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-06-2016 at 7:00 am
Categories: EDA, Siemens EDA

Who can present seventy six slides in sixty minutes, still have time for questions, AND make it interesting? Dr. Walden Rhines that’s who. Here is a link to the presentation but I have to warn you, it is a 100MB PDF file:

Design Verification Challenges: Past, Present, and Future

The DVCon conference was well attended again this year (1,117 participants), probably because the number of verification engineers required for SoC design is exploding. The highlight of the conference of course was Wally’s keynote. In my opinion history is an important part of business strategy and some of the strongest leaders we have are history buffs. It is important to know how you got to where you are today to better make decisions about tomorrow, right? That is why we published a book on the history of the fabless semiconductor industry and a book on The Origin and Evolution of ARM Processors in our Devices.

One example is Dr. Morris Chang. His recollection of more than sixty years in the semiconductor history is legendary. Morris is also fluent on World War II history and military strategy. Another example is Dr. Walden Rhines. Wally’s semiconductor stories covering his days at TI and Mentor Graphics are nothing short of fascinating. Hopefully Wally’s autobiography is in process.

So, if you want a trip down memory lane, the first 57 slides of Wally’s presentation are a great read. If not skip down to slide #58 and see what’s next for functional verification and beyond. Great presentation but I do have a problem with the FPGA Prototyping section starting on page #53. Mentor is an emulation company and the study that is referenced reflects that, absolutely.

Coincidentally, Don Dingee and I are currently researching FPGA Prototyping in preparation for our next book and a session for the Electronic Design Process Symposium in Monterey next month. The session is FPGA Prototyping for IoT, Don’s keynote is The Internet of Trust and a New Frontier For Exploration. Following Don is a panel discussion with FPGA prototyping experts: Tom De Schutter (Synopsys), Frank Schirrmeister (Cadence), and Toshio Nakama (S2C).

If you would like to read more about emulation versus FPGA Prototyping you can start here: What’s the Difference between Emulation and Prototyping? If you would like to get the latest on FPGA Prototyping and have a candid discussion with experts join us in Monterey:

About EDPS:
The Electronic Design Processes (EDP) 2016 Workshop and Symposium, in its 23rd year, has fostered the free exchange of ideas among the top thinkers, movers, and shakers who focus on how chips and systems are designed in the electronics industry. It has provided a forum for this cross-section of the design community to discuss state-of-the-art improvements to electronics design processes and CAD methodologies, rather than on the functions of the individual tools themselves.

Attendees of this elite workshop have met each year since 1993. It has attracted some of the most far-seeing people in the electronics industry and academia as speakers. If you need to know where the industry is and where it’s going with respect to the design and development, and especially methodologies and technology of design, you should consider attending this year.

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My Last Day at Fairchild

My Last Day at Fairchild
by Mark Rioux on 03-05-2016 at 7:00 am
Categories: Foundries

Well today is the day. I am officially retired from Fairchild after 36 years and 9 months on the job. I have worked for Fairchild Camera and Instrument, Fairchild a Schlumberger Company, National Semiconductor and Fairchild Semiconductor. It’s been everything I was hoping for and more. By the way, I walked out the front door at 8:05am, exactly per the plan.

As I write this post, know that I am not a company spokesman but I wanted to leave you with a few observations of the industry based on my experiences and observations. These are in no particular order of importance:

1. Proprietary Technology: I miss the 1980’s. By far, that was the most exciting time of my career. Yes, yields and technology was unrefined by today’s standards but, unlike today, the process technologies we developed were proprietary. We had the FAST and FACT technologies that our competitors and our foundries didn’t have. Each had strengths and weaknesses relative our competition but this enabled us to work closely with our Sales and Marketing group to sell our product to our customer base. Today, internal fabs are viewed little different than external foundries. The opportunity to separate yourself from the pack is limited.

2. Moving Jobs Overseas: Semiconductor Assembly has been overseas since the 1960s but today many overseas wafer fab foundries exist that didn’t exist decades ago, and this has reduced the role and importance of internal fabs. Of course, foundries have helped to establish second source product supplies that protect our customers from delivery supply disruptions and have also kept the internal fabs from becoming complacent. But the internal fabs have lost control of the process know-how that they once had exclusive rights to.

I have logged over 1.4 million frequent flier miles and have met many great people from our plants overseas in Korea, China, Malaysia and the Philippines as well as the offices in Singapore and Furstenfeldbrook. They have taught me much about their different cultures and customs and I have developed a tremendous respect for all of it. I also know that the competitive pressures that have caused our company and others to send production overseas have equalized somewhat as foreign worker salaries have risen. I would like to see the day when manufacturing comes back to the US. I believe it will happen, if only the US, State and Local governments would make it more attractive for our companies to thrive here.

3. Aquisitions: Like so many companies today, Fairchild has grown by acquisitions over the years. Some of these have proven productive and a win-win for both parties, as it should be. Unfortunately some have proven to be a one-sided proposition where the acquired company was swallowed whole and many of their employees layed off. I don’t like this at all. It is just not right. It may be a business reality of today but it is something that I abhor.

4. The automotive industry: I really like the automotive market for so many reasons. The product life is substantially longer than what exists for cellphones or other consumer goods. The automotive customers, such as Bosch and Continental and Hyundai all have strong engineering cultures and I have very much enjoyed working with them. They are demanding, rightly so, and they expect zero delivered defects. This is as it must be. No one wants to drive a car that breaks down everyday. To do well in the business requires close cooperation between the semiconductor supplier and automotive customer, particularly in the design stage. Cost and quality pressures are high. The automotive customers want low cost products every bit as much as any other customer.

One big difference, however, lies in their safe launch requirements. Here, it is important that these safe launch controls be added and costed up front and that the quoted price for these new products include these costs. The temptation for the suppliers is to skimp on these safe launch controls in order to keep product prices the same as for non-automotive products. This would be a big mistake, however, as any quality related customer returns after the launch would result in the customer demanding yet added controls be installed after product release at the supplier’s costs. A better way is to fully load these safe launch controls up front, and later reduce these controls after one or several years as the data supports their removal.

5. Customer focus: This is the most important formula for success. Whatever we do, it is vitally important that we put ourselves in the customer’s shoes, look at the challenges they face as well as their development roadmap and desires and develop a supporting strategy that helps them becomes wildly successful. Today, we sell many products to the big customers such as Samsung and Apple but these companies have significantly more engineering resources than Fairchild does.

So they buy our product because we are a good supplier that offers good product at low prices. I would continue this business but I would focus on the lower tier customers, ones that don’t have the same level of engineering resources, and work with them to provide value by helping them redesign their bards to have a smaller footprint, cost less, and integrate more functions using fewer total devices. This is where I know Fairchild can win.

6. Cost saving: Cost pressures are everywhere, not just on Fairchild but our competitors as well. I am amazed at how much we have been able to improve productivity, reduce costs and operate more efficiently. Our Federal Government would do well to emulate the semiconductor industry in this respect. But all companies need to look at both sides of the profit equation; revenue/margin generation as well as cost management. Increasing revenue and margin requires a focused approach to understand what our customer’s current and future needs are and develop a strategy to supply value to them. This means selling them more than just a product but also solutions to their problems or opportunities.

7. Co-workers: Over 36 years, I have come to think of my co-workers as my family. I love them all. We fight just as siblings do but we also have fun and learn how to work together. I will always think of the Fairchild plant at 333 Western Avenue as my family and it is my sincere wish that they prosper indefinitely. My advice for OnSemi is to take the time to get to know and trust them and capitalize on their capabilities. Make it a win-win proposition.

8. Employee reviews: Like most companies, Fairchild has an annual review process. The format changes frequently and as much as I sometimes hated going through the process, I think they serve their purpose in maintaining contact between the boss and the employee. At the end of the day, what matters is that there is open communication between the employees and management and both sides listen to and work with each other for the betterment of all.

9. The Change Formula: 25 years ago, I had training on human dynamics and high performing work teams. It was a “touchy feely” time in the industry and one that brought management closer to the worker. At that time, I learned about the change formula which was as follows: C ~ f(D x V x S), or Change is a function of Dissatisfaction with the ways things are x Vision of a desired end state x the Steps to get there.

I have never forgotten that formula and have used it often because it works. Whenever I was frustrated with the way things were, I studied that equation and determined why the desired change was not happening. Perhaps people were not really dissatisfied with the way things are, or perhaps they lacked the vision of the desired end state, or perhaps they just didn’t know the steps to get there.

In closing, I want to wish the good people of Fairchild and, in particular the S Portland plant at 333 Western Avenue, much success in your future. I will be cheering for your success.

More articles from Mark

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3 IoT demos highlight Atmel SAMA5

3 IoT demos highlight Atmel SAMA5
by Don Dingee on 03-04-2016 at 4:00 pm
Categories: Foundries, IoT

At the high end of the Atmel product spectrum resides SAMA5 based on an ARM Cortex-A5 core. With an MMU supporting Linux or Android, plus on-the-fly memory encryption and ARM TrustZone in some variants, the SAMA5 family is drawing interest from IoT app developers. We’ll look at three examples, all illustrating how important seamless trust is becoming for the IoT. Continue reading “3 IoT demos highlight Atmel SAMA5”

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A Brief History of Defacto Technologies

A Brief History of Defacto Technologies
by Pawan Fangaria on 03-04-2016 at 7:00 am
Categories: Defacto Technologies, EDA

In early 2000s, semiconductor design at RTL level was gaining momentum. The idea was to process more design steps such as insertion of test and other design structures upfront at the RTL level. The design optimization and verification were to be done at the RTL level to reduce long iterations through gate level design because changes at gate level led to re-work in the design from RTL to gate.

In 1997, Dr. Chouki Aktoufinitiated the implementation of a unique idea for DFT (Design for Testability) verification earlier in the overall design cycle. This work was done at National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble (INPG) in France. The team worked extensively with a large number of European semiconductor companies to establish the proof of concept for the unique DFT technology and its benefits. It took more than 18 man-years of work to implement this concept. The new DFT technology improved the throughput of DFT design by a large extent.

In 2003, Defacto Technologies was founded with the spin-off of the team at INPG. Dr. Aktouf assumed the role of CEO and partnered with Michel Oger, Philippe Duchene, and James Girand in seeding the initial capital for founding Defacto Technologies in Grenoble, France.

Later, they received venture fund from CM-CIC Capital Innovation and Innovacom, two major investment companies in France. Also, French government supported Defacto’s initiative.

In 2005, Defacto introduced RTL Design for Test solution through which designers could do DFT exploration including test compression, memory/logic BIST and JTAG, and signoff at the RTL level. The RTL DFT could quickly check the quality of DFT design at block, IP and SoC levels.

In the pursuit of providing a complete design platform at RTL level, Defacto developed a number of tools to optimize and verify a design, and produce the synthesis-ready RTL. The design signoff at RTL level provided better predictability, design quality, and turn-around-time.


In 2008, the STAR – RTL Build & Signoff platform was launched as Defacto’s flagship fully-customizable RTL-to-RTL editing and verification platform that helped designers to complete planning, analysis, insertion, optimization, and debugging for designs at RTL level before submitting the final RTL to synthesis tool.

The RTL Design Builder could restructure a RTL and generate new RTL code which was optimized and simplified. The new RTL code could be easily synthesized into gate-level design which could be processed through downstream tools very smoothly.

The other tools added in the STAR RTL platform were RTL Design Checker which checked complete connectivity of the design with simulation-free pin-to-pin tracing, and RTL Low Power which checked for compliance of the RTL against UPF and suggested possible corrections for mismatches. Also, the RTL Low Power checked the power domain structures and generated RTL and UPF according to the defined power strategy.

All these tools were seamlessly integrated together within a common easy-to-use GUI. Also, Padring, a GUI based tool which enabled PAD placement was integrated with the STAR RTL platform. The RTL for a padring could be easily edited and generated after its verification.

For IP integration in SoC, RTL IP Integration was developed as a layer on top of RTL Design Builder and RTL Design Checker. The RTL IP Integration enabled integration, packaging, documentation and reuse of an IP based on the IPXACT format. The tool could automatically generate IPXACT description for a RTL block, IP or SoC. Also, it could parse an IPXACT description and check its coherency with the corresponding RTL design.

The STAR RTL platform provided a comprehensive environment for RTL optimization, connectivity check, power intent check, clock verification, ECO, SoC integration, and RTL signoff.

During 2008-10 timeframe the semiconductor community was recognizing the benefits of design signoff at RTL level. As the STAR RTL platform accelerated design closure, it was adopted by top communication chip companies and IDMs around the world. There were a significant number of design houses in US who used STAR RTL platform.

In 2013, Defacto celebrated its 10[SUP]th[/SUP] anniversary by opening its fully owned subsidiary, Defacto Technologies, Inc in Silicon Valley to provide enhanced support to its customers in US.

Defacto also expanded its operation in Japan to address the needs of Asian customers. Recently Socionext Inc, a major semiconductor company headquartered in Japan adopted Defacto solution for RTL and gate-level design analysis and building. Socionext is using Defacto’s STAR RTL platform in design development for various segments such as communication and multimedia. They are gaining 20 to 50 times reduction in design cycles by using STAR RTL platform.

Today, Defacto has their sales and support offices in multiple countries including Europe, US, China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Israel.

The RTL Build & Signoff platform is much enhanced for doing automated design partitioning and restructuring at the RTL level. The platform can accommodate RTL, gate, or RTL-gate mixed level design editing and structuring which enhances SoC design productivity. A quick design exploration can be done at the RTL level to set the goals for an SoC. Also, the platform provides various APIs for designers to quickly access desired design information. Complex designs with hundreds of millions of instances can be easily processed on STAR RTL platform. The platform is generic for development of any kind of SoC or IP.

Over the years, Defacto Technologies has emerged as a provider of innovative design solution at RTL level that leads to increased design performance, reduced die size and power requirement, and improved design quality for better reliability.

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The Next Big Thing for Tech in 2020

The Next Big Thing for Tech in 2020
by Raj Kosaraju on 03-03-2016 at 4:00 pm
Categories: IoT

Gartner estimates that by 2020, there will be some 30 billion connected devices. IDC is even more bullish and expects there to be about 200 billion connected devices by 2021.

Around the world, city, state and federal governments, as well as other public-sector organizations, are leading the way in bringing the Internet of Everything to life. The way we access the internet has changed rapidly over the past few years, transitioning from desktops to mobile devices.

Now, the internet is expanding again – coming to all of the everyday devices found in our homes, businesses, and cities.

The Internet of Everything is a $19 trillion global opportunity over the next decade: Private-sector firms can create as much as $14.4 trillion of value while cities, governments and other public-sector organizations can create $4.6 trillion. (Cisco).

As we all know, technology is evolving rapidly. It has, and will continue to, profoundly change our lives in the years to come. Just four years ago, it would have been hard to imagine we would have access to the kind information we now have in our pockets. So what will the future look like four years from now? What kind of positive changes can we expect to see rising out of the Internet of Everything (IoE) by 2020?

1) By 2020 we could expect to see a massive Internet of Everything in linear knowledge taking place through any device, anywhere.
This process perfectly captures how a connection between the four pillars of IoE – people, process, data and things – is already influencing. Though currently, physical attendance is the norm; by 2020 we could expect to see tuition taking place through any device, anywhere. The rise of the Internet of Everything looks promising. Technology’s adoption by schools and universities has not always kept pace with advances in consumer technology. However, the level of connectivity offered by the Internet of Everything has the potential to vastly enrich the learning process for students around the globe. Technology education is evolving from a linear knowledge-transfer model, to a more collaborative, engaging process. Rather than a bottlenecked route for information to come from set textbooks, students are able to use the internet to discover their own sources of information to add to the overall learning process.

Through IoE, the linear knowledge-sharing dialogue between teacher and student can evolve into something entirely within the student’s control. They will be able to learn at their own pace, focusing more on what they perceive as relevant to them. The Internet of Everything is also increasing the impact students are having on shaping the education process. For example, students are keen to use data-gathering devices to tag physical objects, which would then relay back live information. This could include sensors and webcams to monitor live animals and their behaviour, or devices to record tidal patterns, temperature, rainfall, air quality etc. This way, students would be directly involved in the collection of data, and not simply given facts and figures to analyse.

2) IoE will help solve two of the biggest problems facing the world
The Internet of Everything will help solve two of the biggest problems facing the world: energy and health care. We long ago inserted “intelligence” into objects in the form of thermostats and the like; the internet of everything will extend this principle exponentially, giving us unprecedented control over the objects that surround us. So when we talk about using internet of things in healthcare and buildings it is just the continuation of our effort to automate things and make life simpler.

Over the next decade, we can expect to see the 99 percent of the electronics yet to be connected to the Internet becoming intelligent, connected devices. Connecting all of these devices and making them smart, is all about improving the world’s ‘connected intelligence’. The Internet of Everything will enable faster decision-making, greater sustainability and substantial innovation. This will affect not just the way we do our jobs, but the kinds of jobs we do.

3) Smarter Manufacturing will be the word of the day
Over the next ten years, we will see industrial process and IT intersecting. Alongside devices and the data they produce, we’re going to see IoE becoming much more fundamental to production processes. Sometimes referred to as ‘smarter manufacturing’, the industry is entering a new digitalised environment with the help of IoE. It certainly stands to reason manufacturing plants themselves will need to be as ‘intelligent’ as the billions of connected devices they produce, if not more so. Manufacturing and IT will become inherently connected by 2022 and, as such, both sectors will gain a far deeper understanding of the other. The connection between the two will open up new territories, and with new territory comes the need for new skills and new job roles.

4) New opportunities to create new products and services as products become connected
Businesses will see new opportunities to create new products and services based around growing IoE connections. Success will likely become dependent on willingness to venture into the connected frontier with those businesses which stay behind losing their relevance in the ever-connected world. As products become connected – as milk cartons go digital and toothbrushes become intelligent – the amount of data produced will be vast. In connecting the unconnected, a process which is currently churning out 25,000 connecting devices every 15 minutes, it is estimated that 220,000 new engineers will be needed each year between now and 2022. Such roles will revolve largely around processing the vast amounts of data produced by billions of new devices.

We’re likely to see a far greater demand for skilled IT workers, needed to update legacy networks with innovative new storage methods. In the past two years alone, we’ve produced more data than the preceding three decades which means we need people to manage it all. Data also needs protecting and there is a huge need for more cybersecurity professionals – something outlined in the Cisco Annual Security Report 2014.

5) We’re going to see these changes becoming more ubiquitous
Gartner predicts that enterprises will make extensive use of IoE technology, and there will be a wide range of products sold into various markets. These will include advanced medical devices, factory automation sensors and applications in industrial robotics, sensor motes for increased agricultural yield, and automotive sensors and infrastructure integrity monitoring systems for diverse areas such as road and railway transportation, water distribution and electrical transmission; an endless list of products and services.

Cloud, mobility, big data are all converging and making a seamless network, but the success of this convergence depends heavily on the ability to actually move and access the data. And considering that millions of additional devices (some of which are just sensors) will enter the equation means its time for further investment and quick. Over the next decade we’re going to see these changes becoming more ubiquitous. Signs the transformation is already underway can be seen in the kind of technology that’s appearing, be it wearable technology, home controls or Bluetooth enabled toothbrushes.

Once such devices can communicate with each other – via the Internet of Everything infrastructure – is when the transformation will be rapid and substantial, creating richer everyday experiences for us all. Soon enough, sensors will be everywhere. Built into billions of devices, they will be the building blocks on which the city of tomorrow stands. The connection between people, processes, data and things will create an infrastructure that will entirely transform even the most everyday of tasks. What was once a futuristic concept – the Internet of Everything (IoE) – is fast becoming a reality.

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Waze Stealing the Keys to Your City!

Waze Stealing the Keys to Your City!
by Roger C. Lanctot on 03-03-2016 at 12:00 pm
Categories: Automotive

Waze’s Connected Citizens program continues to get a lot of positive attention for its partnerships with cities and states around the world. The program provides free access to Waze traffic and crowd-sourced data in exchange for information about road closures and traffic incidents.
Continue reading “Waze Stealing the Keys to Your City!”