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The Midwestern Hedge Fund Manager

The Midwestern Hedge Fund Manager
by Ed McKernan on 05-22-2012 at 7:06 pm
Categories: General

Four years ago, a VC friend of mine was invited to a get together with a prominent Hedge Fund Manager from the Midwest. The meeting was an arrangement between fellow Harvard Grads. The Fund Manager was looking to make investments in the valley, to diversify away from his heavily weighted financial positions. Though, not recognized at the time, the Manager had a few months to rearrange his portfolio away from the coming collapse and into “growth” engines that would excite his Limited Partners. The discussions boiled down to Social Media, “Green” and traditional valley firms. The Manager chose “Green” because of the balance between valuation, growth prospects and requirement for significant capital. The story continues….

Moore’s Law is relentless and unforgiving, even when it comes to “Green.” In good times it can provide great returns, but only for short periods. In bad times, it seems the losses are never ending and you beg to be cut loose from the toxic waste. The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter was the first to describe the process of Creative Destruction that well summarizes what Moore’s Law does to an economy that tries to stand still. He wrote the book in 1942.

For the last four years, the valley has operated under a dual economy. Social Media has roared ahead on the backs of cheaper computers, servers, storage and networking. Apple likewise has built a new platform that leverages low cost hardware to create the multitude of synched devices that households find necessary and irresistible. This morning I did a check on the performance of leading semiconductor firms from May 2008 to today. Of the list of firms (Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, Xilinx, Altera, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Marvell, Nvidia, Micron, and Linear Tech) only Altera, Xilinx and Qualcomm are up by more than 15%. I looked at a second group that supports the Mobile Tsunami marketplace (ARM, Cirrus, Cypress, Sandisk, Atmel). They are all up big except Sandisk who was up big until two months ago. Such is the travails of FREE memory.

The Hedge Fund Manager, who moved part of his investments out of the financials and into the Solar Field went from bad to worse (would have been much better throwing a dart at a list of S&P500 companies). If our Manager would have bought from the traditional basket of semiconductor companies, he would have been fine. But better yet, our Manager could have outperformed all of his peers if he would have just invested in the Mobile Tsunami basket of stocks (AAPL, ARMH, QCOM, CY, CRUS, ATML) and gone away for four years. The performance would be so top notch he would probably make the cover of reputable magazines.

The semiconductor industry is no longer seen as glamorous, and has the feel of the automobile market pounding away metal day after day. The lack of attention shows in their compressed P/Es. A turn though is in the offing as we in our field have been trained to expect.

Hedge Fund Managers don’t last if they can’t adapt to a changing environment. The last time the country encountered an “End of the World” Scenario like the 2008-2009 financial crises was at the beginning of WWII. Franklin Roosevelt had shepherded the country through a partial recovery from the Great Depression when we were attacked at Pearl Harbor (unemployment was 9.9%). His greatest triumph, winning WWII, was made possible by his willingness to make concessions to big business that enabled the war machine to ramp beyond what was considered possible. It led to the outfitting of not only the 12M man American Army, but to that of Britain and to a degree – Russia. It was an “All In” strategy against two well armed enemies that were on the verge of winning the war.

Our Hedge Fund Manager, the President, could have from the first day in office taken steps to reduce risk across the board. The financial crises dramatically increased the cost of capital. In addition to the $1T stimulus, he could have implemented tax and regulatory relief that would have led to greater employment in the valley and the US over all. The cost would have been minimal especially in light of the alternative scenario that has developed. The articles about Apple, Google and the rest of the companies in the Silicon Valley off shoring their revenue to avoid taxes is a very big deal because they are tied into well paying operations jobs (think manufacturing, test and shipping) that follow with them. A consumption tax, as one alternative to the corporate tax, would have created economic growth and jobs stateside. Imagine the upside we would be enjoying if our World Class, Export Oriented Semiconductor Industry were going Great Guns!

With negative returns and a flight of capital from Limited Partners, the Hedge Fund Manager has no choice but to take on greater risks for the balance of the year. Let us hope that we get to work off a Pro Growth Playbook starting next year.

Full Disclosure: I am Long AAPL, INTC, QCOM, ALTR

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Intel Tri-Gate is in Trouble?!?!?!

Intel Tri-Gate is in Trouble?!?!?!
by Daniel Nenni on 05-22-2012 at 6:00 pm
Categories: Foundries, Intel Foundry
11 Comments

Since the last Intel logo parody went over so well here is another one! Not so much a parody in light of the recent PR from Intel that the fabless semiconductor business model is doomed. As one of the doomed little people inside the fabless ecosystem I take exception to this but I digress….

The word around Silicon Valley is that Intel is having manufacturing issues at 22nm. The first indication is product launch delays, but more importantly, the dissection of the 22nm silicon. The conclusions being made are:

[LIST=1]

  • Tri-Gate power consumption is higher than expected
  • A 22nm mobile SoC optimized process will be expensive
  • The 22nm to 14nm migration is not scaling as expected

    Bottom line: Moore’s Empirical Observation (Law) is coming back to haunt Intel.

    “What would you like your legacy to the world to be? Anything but Moore’s Law!” Gordon Moore May 2008.

    If true, this does not surprise me at all. It is common Silicon Valley knowledge that Intel uses ultra-restrictive process methodologies. That is why they get different results than the foundries using the same semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Ultra-restrictive methodologies work fine when you are manufacturing one product (microprocessors), but the foundry business and mobile SoCs do not have that luxury.

    The troubling part of this whole thing is that Intel’s problems with Tri-Gates have a much broader implication as there really is no major distinction between Intel’s term “Tri-Gate”, and the industry standard “FinFET”. The thin oxide on the top of the fin enables a (small) increment to the device width, when added to the height of the fin sidewalls — a third, or “Tri-” gate, if you will.

    The term “FinFET” refers to either the three thin-oxide surfaces or a different fabrication option that results in a thick oxide on the top of the fin, and thus a “dual” gate device consisting of the two fin sidewalls only.

    However, in practice, there are some unique characteristics of Intel’s implementation that are coming to light. There are some interesting Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) photographs of Intel’s Ivy Bridge devices that have been posted by the engineering analysis team at Chipworks.

    The design community (outside Intel) is a little surprised at the extent to which the fin sidewall profile on Intel’s devices is very sloped, almost resulting in a triangular rather than rectangular cross-section. No doubt, that simplifies fabrication, but most certainly complicates the extraction and device modeling requirements.

    Other than that “unique” profile chosen by Intel for their “Tri-Gate” implementation, there really is no key distinction between “Tri-Gate” and the industry standard term “FinFET”.

    Intel is absolutely on the bleeding edge of FinFET manufacturing so I hope we are all sympathetic to their plight. Lets minimize the drama, learn from it, and move this technology forward as quickly as possible.

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    DAC 2012…need caffeine?

    DAC 2012…need caffeine?
    by Paul McLellan on 05-21-2012 at 5:00 pm
    Categories: EDA, Events
    1 Comment

    You are in San Francisco for DAC and you want a coffee. OK, if your booth duty is 5 minutes away you pretty much have to take the Moscone coffee. Tastes good, hot, has caffeine. As Meatloaf used to sing (showing my age here) two out of three ain’t bad.

    Yes, there are Starbucks all over the city, one on 4th Street just by Moscone Center, from where Steve Jobs famously ordered 2000 lattes to go during the iPhone launch.

    But better imho is Peets coffee, everywhere (founded in 1966), and who sold Starbucks their beans for their first year or two of operation. I find their coffee better than Starbucks and like Starbucks they have free wireless (but just for an hour per drink).

    My favorite place for coffee is Four Barrel Coffee at 375 Valencia. They roast their own coffee in the store and it is incredibly good. They are pretty fast too, so even if the line is to the door you won’t have to wait long. I love the coffee but I’m perhaps biased since I live a block away. But it is regularly picked as the best coffee in the city. And the apparently the coffee blogs (who knew there were coffee blogs?) rate it amongst the best in the entire western US. They only play vinyl so all those LPs I used to have are fashionable again. The only minor niggle is that they are too hipster to let you know their wireless password.

    But that’s a long way from Moscone and probably a long way from where you are staying (but it is just a block from Zeitgeist if you decide to go and grab a beer there).

    Another great coffee place is Blue Bottle Coffee. They roast their own coffee too, but not in the stores. There are two near Moscone. One on Mint Plaza (66 Mint Street along Mission just past 5th Street). The other is in SFMOMA on the top floor, but you have to be visiting the museum to get to it. The Mint Plaza one can get very busy but the coffee is worth waiting for. There is one in the ferry building but don’t even think about trying to get a coffee there during the Saturday farmers’ market, you will have a 45 minute wait.

    If you prefer your coffee with a bit of something extra, you should visit the Buena Vista Café at 2765 Hyde Street (near Fisherman’s Wharf and at the end of the Powell & Hyde cable car). This is the first place Irish coffee was served in the US and they still serve a lot, often making a dozen simultaneously (symmetric multiprocessing!). And the initials for Irish Coffee are IC. It sounds a little familiar…can’t think why.

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    AMS Programmable Prototype Platforms

    AMS Programmable Prototype Platforms
    by ahmed.shahein on 05-21-2012 at 10:25 am
    Categories: Aldec, EDA, FPGA

    AVNET released their 15[SUP]th[/SUP] Xfest this year, a couple of months ago. It was here in Germany last week. It was a well organized event, rich with invaluable technical information and full of decent smart engineers and managers. If you missed it this year register for the next event as soon as you can.

    It was a very successful event, I enjoyed a must read book (Getting started in Consulting by Allan Weiss) through my trip from the capital of the black forest (Freiburg), to the capital of one of the most powerful economical states in Germany (Munich).

    They had an exhibition sponsored by several leader companies in the field of programmable and electronic devices suppliers. I will take you through what grasped my attention there.

    Aldec – I was attracted by the Open Source – VHDL Verification Methodology (OS-VVM) release. At last there is a consolidated functional verification methodology for VHDL. However, not all the EDA tools support it so far, probably Aldec and Mentor. Nevertheless, you have to check it:
    http://www.aldec.com/en/solutions/functional_verification/os_vvm

    Cypress – The Programmable System on Chip (PsoC) analog mixed micro-controller series caught me due to there capabilities, price (50$ starter board), and easy/friendly use. Check it out at:
    http://www.cypress.com/?rID=38235

    Analog Devices – They offers an enormous amount of useful and handy sets of Plug-in Modules (Pmod) for AVNET and Xilinx demo and evaluation boards. The Pmod is almost getting to be a standard interface for FPGA/CPLD boards. They offered a 15 Pmod for about 90$ during the event. Further, there is still more than 50 Pmods (ADC, DAC, LED, LCD, SSD, Blue-tooth, RF Tx/Rx … etc) are planned to be released soon. Those Pmods facilitate and enhance the productivity and capabilities of prototyping. Check some of them out at:
    http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Catalog.cfm?NavPath=2,401&Cat=9

    AVNET – AMS FPGA allows the user to benefit from digital correction, e.g., DR and linearity or calibration. The designer doesn’t need to write VHDL code for interfacing the XADC (Xilinx ADC), all what you have to do is to read the register, as shown in the figure below. Why Xilinx 7 series is different than previous series? The 7 series has a common design resource, i.e., the same DSP and CLB architectures. In other words, if you shifted from Spartan to Virtex you expect the same performance or resources usage.

    http://www.xilinx.com/technology/roadmap/agile-mixed-signal.htm
    http://www.zedboard.org/
    https://avnetexpress.avnet.com/store/em/EMController?langId=-1&storeId=500201&catalogId=500201&action=products&inStock=&rohs=&proto=&cutTape=&topSellers=&regionalStock=&term=xilinx&Nn=25&cat=1&N=100639+4294957595

    TI – The charming 1$ MSP430 micro-controller and the 4$ Launchpad evaluation board, what else do we need.

    There were also Maxim, PLC2 and much more, however, due to the limited time I didn’t have the chance to visit their sections.

    Therefore,
    FPGA + ADC = AMS FPGA

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    EDAC Emerging Companies: Learn How to Emerge

    EDAC Emerging Companies: Learn How to Emerge
    by Paul McLellan on 05-20-2012 at 9:00 pm
    Categories: EDA, Events
    1 Comment

    EDAC has a series of seminars for emerging companies with Jim Hogan. Jim has been in EDA since, like, forever. First at National, then at Cadence, then at Artisan (now ARM) and then as an investor first at Telos (Cadence’s VC arm) and more recently on his own at Vista Ventures. He has been involved with many EDA and semiconductor startups. I think his mixture of technology knowledge and investor/financial knowledge is second to none.

    I’ve worked with Jim for many years, first for my time at Cadence when he and I and Ted Vucurevich made up the Office of Strategic Technology (sort of CTO for Cadence but split in three). Then at Virtutech we persuaded Telos to invest in us (an investment Cadence held even after the dissolution of Telos) and more recently on a number of consulting projects.

    The first of these is Milestones to Building a Technology Company and it is a panel session with Jim, Dean Drako the CEO of IC Manage, and Ravi Subranamian the CEO of Berkeley Design Automation. It will take place at 6pm on Thursday May 31st (a few days before DAC) at Silicon Valley Bank, 3005 Tasman Drive, Santa Clara.

    At 6pm there is a reception (I’m guessing sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank as was the case for the EDAC CEO panel). The panel session then starts at 7pm and will be followed by a Q&A at 8pm.

    It is free but you must register here.

    The evening is sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank, Chip Estimate and EDAC themselves. It is organized by Steve Pollock, who is Chairman of the EDAC Emerging Companies Committee with Georgia Marzalak of Valley PR and Gloria Nichols of Launch Marketing.

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    Layout Migration and DRC Correction at DAC 2012

    Layout Migration and DRC Correction at DAC 2012
    by Daniel Nenni on 05-20-2012 at 5:00 pm
    Categories: Uncategorized

    In the world of sub-40nm IC design, as feature size decreases with each new process node, it becomes increasingly difficult to migrate a layout to a new process technology. Too many factors impact manufacturability and yield. At each new process node, to make sure that a given layout is manufacturable and yields well, it is subject to rules that grow in number, type and complexity. Manual migration of a layout from one process technology to another is extremely complex and time-consuming. When an entire library must be migrated, automation is the only practical choice.

    “Today’s 28nm and 20nm technologies present many new and tougher challenges for physical implementation. A library that is competitive from density, routability, reliability and variability perspectives and at the same time respects all new technology design rules is very hard to design manually in a timely manner. Furthermore, frequent changes and updates to new technology design rules make it even more challenging to keep up with manually” explained Coby Zelnik, Sagantec‘s president and CEO. “nmigrate is an automatic layout migration, compaction and optimization solution that is proven to successfully handle all these requirements and updates, delivering optimal results that are design rule clean” Zelnik concluded.

    nmigrate is based on innovative 2-D layout optimization technology using dynamic compaction that generates an accurate layout solution optimally satisfying all design rules and constraints. The ability to optimize a layout considering all 2D rules, constraints and cost functions, make it versatile, and suitable for different applications including migration, DRC correction and DFM.

    2-D Optimization:The compaction technology allows all 2D rules and effects to be processed in one run, making optimal tradeoffs between constraints and cost in all directions. Including design rules involving multiple shapes where measurement in one dimension influences multiple rule values in the other dimension. Such 2D optimization engine is essential to effectively handle mandatory and DFM rules


    Cell optimized for preferred rules: M1 before/after

    Self Steering Dynamic Optimization:Advanced technology design rules may have multiple different and discontinuous correct solutions. When polygons and edges start changing position as part of process migration or DRC correction, finding the optimal solution considering all possible discontinuous position configurations is very difficult and requires an engine that can make the right choices and decisions in a multi-dimensional dynamic environment. nmigrate is designed to dynamically evaluate rules and self-steer the engine to achieve the best optimization.

    Illustrated are few examples for rules that require dynamic choices and self- steering optimization:

    • Width and common run length dependent spacing rule
    • Contact groups and via array rules where each spacing value depends on the number and spacing of other shapes.
    • Coloring: Due to the printability challenges in 20nm technology new types of rules have been introduced, including DP coloring, A-B spacing rules and auto breaking of odd cycle color conflicts.


    Design Rule Changes:     New process technology rules change often as the process matures. Implementing each such change manually is time-consuming and error-prone. nmigrate automates the process and enables quick updates with no time penalty. See below example of a pitch change from 130 to 135nm


    Creating Derivative Libraries:With nmigrate, creation of derivative libraries is quick and automated (for example creation of 8-track library from an existing 9-track library).


    Full Chip DRC Correction
    Often a complete design needs to undergo updates of a few design rules close to tape-out, or even after tape-out for yield enhancement. Similarly, often migrating to a different foundry requires only changing a few design rules. nmigrate uses a fast clip-and-fix flow that is completely scalable by using multiple CPUs.


    Applications

    • Process migration
    • Foundry re-targeting
    • Handling design rule changes
    • Creating derivative libraries
    • DFM optimization

    Key Features & Benefits

    • Automatically delivers 28nm and 20nm DRC-clean layout using 2D optimization
    • Most optimal results guaranteed by self- steering and dynamic evaluation engine
    • Sophisticated cost function system optimizes layout for yield, variability, reliability and other design metrics
    • Supports user-defined constraints and layout templates

    Sagantec is the leading EDA provider of process migration solutions for custom IC design. Sagantec’s EDA solutions enable IC designers to leverage their investment in existing physical design IP and accomplish dramatic time and effort savings in the implementation of custom, analog, mixed-signal and memory circuits in advanced process technologies.

    These solutions have been used commercially by tier-1 semiconductor companies, and have been proven to reduce layout time and effort by factors of 3x to 20x and enable dramatically faster introduction of IC products in new technology nodes.

    Sagantec has booth #1402at the 2012 Design Automation Conference. See you there!


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    Going with the Flow at AMD

    Going with the Flow at AMD
    by Paul McLellan on 05-19-2012 at 11:00 am
    Categories: EDA

    At EDPS in Monterey, Tom Spyrou of AMD talked about their compute environment in the context of parallel algorithms. I discovered that they are a big user of RTDA’s FlowTracer so I talked to Philip Steinke at AMD about how they used it.

    He said that they largely use it as described in The Art of Flows as a graphical distributed make. They don’t make use of the automatic dependency detection that FlowTracer can do, instead create the dependencies by hand. When one step in the flow completes it declares certain files as outputs, and the next step declares files as inputs. FlowTracer ensures that one step cannot run until the previous ones have completed successfully.

    AMD has a large base of users spread throughout the company ranging from fresh graduates to 20-30 years of experience veterans. They have a whole portfolio of different highly automated flows that cover most of the chip design process.

    I asked Philip how the flow was originally put together. He told me that it was pretty much like the “French Style” described in the Art of Flows. It is very simple to add new pieces into the flow so that FlowTracer will pick it up and add it to the flow graph.

    It was first developed as a solution for a single project, but over time it was adopted by more teams. It is now the basis for almost all digital implementation in AMD.

    They have augmented FlowTracer with a couple of other tools. They use LSF (now from IBM since they acquired platform computing late last year) for scheduling jobs on their server farms. And they have created a special in-house utillity for scanning log files looking for error patterns, capable of ignoring errors and so on. This is to deal with the case where a tool doesn’t do so badly that it returns an error status but issues errors that might make the result suboptimal.

    Download a free copy of The Art of Flows here.

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    Novocell Semiconductor Update 2012!

    Novocell Semiconductor Update 2012!
    by Daniel Nenni on 05-18-2012 at 1:47 pm
    Categories: Uncategorized

    Since most of you have not heard of Novocellthis is more of an introduction but they have been around for 10+ years and are NVM (non-volitile memory) pioneers. NVM has evolved into a critical part of the semiconductor ecosystem which is why I sought them out. While SiDense and Kilopass bury each other in legal fees Novocell is doing some very clever things.


    NOVOCELL, formerly Intelligent Micro Design, was founded in 2001 and has become the foundation of a growing semiconductor industry in the Pittsburgh region. As a member of The Pittsburgh Technology Collaborative (TTC), Novocell is part of a research network that includes Carnegie Mellon University, Penn State University, The University of Pittsburgh and other TTC member companies.

    I had breakfast with the Novocell guys last week and saw them again at the SEMICO IP Ecosystem Conference. I’m a big fan of NVM from my Virage days so you will be reading much more about Novocell on SemiWiki. Here is a description of the Novocell design methodology:

    Back at the birth of the antifuse OTP market, David Novosel designed the original NovoBlox OTP memory with the goal of creating one of the most highly reliable memory IPs on the market. It was this goal that gave birth to the unique Smartbit™ bit cell and the many patents Novocell has been awarded over the subsequent years. When developing every product since the initial NovoBlox IP, Novocell’s design team has ensured that the initial standards for “incredible reliability” has never been compromised.

    Conscious tradeoffs were made in the design of the initial NovoBlox OTP NVM, specifically trading off size for reliability. Novocell was not driven by creating the smallest memory footprint IP on the market, but we do take immense pride in designing and supplying the most reliable. Since that initial product offering, Novocell has incorporated countless design changes and innovations, some to increase reliability and convenience to customers, and some which have led to smaller area. And, while some competitive memory products may take up less space on an IC in certain configurations, there is no guarantee that those IPs will perform at a par, or better, than Novocell 100% of the time.

    To maximize reliability, the breakdown voltage in all Smartbit-based NVM IP is contained entirely within the memory core guaranteeing that only the programmed cells see high voltage. The reliability of unprogrammed cells or other devices on the IC are not negatively impacted with Novocell’s design methodology. Our Smartbit technology also features adynamic(not static, statistically-timed) write protocol withactivesensing which ensures hard breakdown of the gate oxide and the creation of a permanent short between the gate polysilicon and the channel of a programmed device—it’s the foundation of our Smartbit technology, and a feature of our IP that no other antifuse OTP supplier can ever replicate.

    You can also visit the Novocell landing page on SemiWiki HERE. Dr. Eric Esteve did a nice blog on Novocell and the NVM market HERE. NVM applications are endless and a very big part of mobile so you will be reading much more about it in the very near future.


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    Aldec and Tanner EDA at DAC

    Aldec and Tanner EDA at DAC
    by Daniel Payne on 05-18-2012 at 10:19 am
    Categories: Aldec, EDA

    In April I blogged about a webinar on co-simulation hosted by Aldec and Tanner EDA where they showed how the RTL simulator (Riviera PRO) and SPICE simulator (T-Spice) had been connected together for IC designers wanting to do real AMS simulations.

    The availability date of the co-simulation wasn’t clear, so today the press release says that this co-simulation is now available running on either Linux or Windows platforms.

    Here’s a screenshot of how you would view both digital and analog waveforms in each viewer:

    I found out more info on one product bundle and pricing:

    • Schematic capture, S-Edit
    • Waveform viewer, W-Edit
    • SPICE circuit simulator, T-Spice
    • Verilog-A
    • Verilog-AMS
    • Riviera-PRO for Tanner A/MS
    • $21,083 for a 1 year Time Based License (TBL)

    Call you local Tanner EDA sales rep to get more details on pricing for other TBL terms or perpetual licenses.

    What makes this particular combination of AMS simulation different is how affordable it is, compared to what the big three EDA companies are charging.

    If you are headed to the DAC show in San Francisco held June 4-6, then check out this co-simulation at Aldec booth #2126 or Tanner EDA booth #1126. You can even register online for a private demo at Tanner EDA.

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    CDN Live in Munich: Cadence is back on track!

    CDN Live in Munich: Cadence is back on track!
    by Eric Esteve on 05-18-2012 at 3:44 am
    Categories: Cadence, EDA

    Before going to Munich to attend to CDN-Live, I took a look at the agenda to figure out which presentations to attend, and I must say it was not so easy to choose: CDN Live agendais dense, with multiple tracks running in parallel (Custom Design, Digital Implementations, Design IP, Functional Verifications and Verification IP, PCB design… and more) and presentations given by Cadence, by partners like Global Foundries, IMEC, ARM, or Universities and by Cadence’s customers, TI, Renesas, NXP, ST-Ericsson to name a few.

    The first part of Tuesday started with a 30 mn talk from Lip-Bu Tan, the CEO of Cadence who has joined the company three and half years ago to put the company back on track and this was a real challenge as, before his venue, Cadence was about to lose credibility (and soul), due to some weird accounting approaches. I don’t know much about it, just that the technical community, inside and outside the company, was confused. Then, at the beginning of 2010, came “EDA 360” initiative. To summarize, EDA 360 reflect the vision about the future of Electronic design, it says that supporting H/W design only is not enough, and that large EDA companies will have to offer the right tools to manage H/W and S/W development, design verification and system validation. Because this vision was proposed with a superb marketing campaign, it generated high expectations, and finally some deception… By definition, a vision reflects a long term view of where you want to go within, say, 10 years, not the company’s product port-folio today or even tomorrow (next year). So, I was pretty impatient to listen to Mr. Lip-Bu Tan, and to know what were the key messages delivered by Cadence management!

    The show took place in an amphitheatre; the ten meters high backdrop of the stage was made of multiple LED panels changing color (depending on the speaker) – a classic EDA show. Then Mr. Lip-Bu Tan started talking: about Cadence, putting the focus on Cadence technical community excellence (which is true, according with my own experience when running technical discussion with product marketing person from the company). Talking also about Cadence’s customers, saying that the company want to serve them well, even when their demand is challenging, adding that he is travelling a lot to meet them. You can argue that it’s easy telling, but the message itself is very positive.

    Mr. Lip-Bu Tan also said that he is a VC, and as being involved as an investor with various Electronic companies worldwide, he tries to make sure that, first they use Cadence tools, second that they can get the higher satisfaction from the tools, which means for Electronic companies, release a product at spec and reach their time to market objectives. I must say that I completely buy such an argument! When the CEO is also a customer for the products sold by the company he is running, this should increase the level of confidence customers may have in the company.

    Another word was part of the message: “humble”. I heard it the day before the show, from a Cadence employee talking about the CEO. I also heard it from the CEO during the show, when he said that this should be the behavior of Cadence employees when dealing with customers. You may think this is easy telling again… Maybe, but some of the EDA industry representatives have been known for their… arrogance in the past, then, indicating the opposite direction should be positively perceived by Cadence customers!

    Because he presented himself as a VC, Mr. Lip-Bu Tan was smart enough to leave the highly technical content to the next person on stage, Tom Beckley (Sr VP, R&D, Custom IC and Signoff, Silicon realization Group). I will not go into the details of this presentation, as EDA tools development is not my area of expertise. I would like to mention that Tom has specially thanks Jacques-Olivier Piednoir, who I know since my very first job in Matra Harris Semiconductor, and who has helped me a lot, back in 1986, to prepare my first trip in the Silicon Valley to present a paper at the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] Multilevel Interconnect Conference (multilevel was meaning the second metal level, for a 2 micron technology, at that time!). And because we are leaving in a small world, I should mention that Jacques-Olivier has worked under the direct responsibility of Paul McLelan, it was in the 80’s at VLSI Technology!


    The show ended with a very informative Industry keynotes from Luc Van den Hove, CEO of IMEC, dealing with the various prospective developments in CMOS technologies, like:

    • Enabling lithography: 193nm immersion litho (incl. double patterning), EUV litho
    • New materials in devices: high-k, strained Si
    • New device concepts: 3D, FINFET, tunnelFET
    • Advanced memory: DRAM, floating gate, resistive RAM
    • Advanced interconnect: 3D, Cu/low-k

    Then, the conference started, with multiple tracks taking place in smaller rooms. I have just attended a few presentations about DDRn Controller and WideI/O IP, both very technical and certainly useful for the design community. If I have to give an evaluation, I would say 85% technical and only 15% (or less) marketing. I told you, Cadence want to pass the message that the company has renewed, focus on the technical content and tell their customers that they want to serve them well… as a customer, that’s the kind of message I like to hear! Yes, I had a free lunch, but no, that’s not the reason why I write this way…

    Another blog will be fully dedicated to their NVM Express subsystem IP product launch, happening during CDN Live, which could be a very interesting move on the (IP and VIP) chess game currently running between Cadence and Synopsys… stay tuned!

    Eric Estevefrom IPNEST