Overcoming the new design complexity barrier: Alignment of technology and business models

The semiconductor industry today faces a new design complexity barrier. Convergence of product features brings unprecedented complexities on process technology, architectural and gate-count. Integration and cost drivers bring 3-D stacking with through-silicon vias. Heterogeneity brings high-voltage devices, image sensors, and MEMS into a single product design optimization. From IP migration, to variability modeling and mitigation, to NRE cost, the new paradigm is that these are no longer discrete issues addressable by point-tool solutions. Overcoming this new design complexity barrier requires breakthrough technologies and integrated EDA solutions. Funding the development of new EDA solutions must make business sense. But while traditional ROI assessments are based on “one company-centric” business models, the next stage of the industry´s evolution requires ROI and business models that acknowledge coexistence, and even collaboration, of multiple companies. This is especially true during this unprecedented worldwide financial earthquake. A win-win-win future will depend on the emergence of an innovative business model that is realized collaboratively by key players across the IC design and manufacturing ecosystem. Fortunately, recent initiatives have the promise to meet this need.