Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to Be ...

... Engineers?

Former EE Times editor Brian Fuller recaps a spontaneous debate between semiconductor panelists regarding what field your children are studying.

It's a touchy subject among engineers. Most of us still love engineering. But, we may have seen career frustrations, especially in the aftershocks of the .com bubble bursting. In America, there's the sense that some small percentage of engineers do fantastically well if they join the right start-up, but most enjoy an above-average though not large lifestyle. It seems like the folks doing really well and making it look easy are the lawyers and MBAs.

Brian presents the two points of view in Greeley's Ghost: Panel dispatches. Peggy the EDA analyst has kids studing hard sciences -- good for her. Jack Harding, former Cadence CEO, has kids studying Liberal Arts. Fair enough (as long as it's a "respectable" Liberal Art ;-). But what I found interesting was his justification:

It's where you sit in the value chain that makes the difference." IBM, he argues, doesn't make money on its technology development. It makes money taking other people's technology and finding ways to make profit on it. It's hiring not engineers but liberal arts and business people. In housing, he added, the contractor takes the risk and gets the margin. The plumbers, framers and electricians he hires (you can't build the house without 'em!) get an hourly wage.

Grudgingly, I'd have to admit there's truth to this. But it's really more of a justification of the value of an executive over an individual contributor. And who says that executives can't be engineers?

Is EE Times Outsourcing Journalism?

From reading earlier posts in this blog, you know that I regularly read EE Times. It's my main publication covering the business and technology of Electronics, Semiconductors, and EDA. I find it more relevant than my IEEE publications!

But, lately I've become concerned about cutbacks.

• First they downsized the size of the papers (physically), and eliminated that funky old favorite "Immortal Works".
• Next, they made substantial staff cutbacks, including axing Richard Goering and their Editor in Chief.

Maybe this is the inevitable consequence, but lately I've noticed that many of their features are written by industry sources rather than full-time journalists. In moderation, this isn't a bad thing. Practicing engineers can give a valuable real-world perspective on problems we're seeing and how to solve them. But in excess, I'm worried that EE Times will become a collection of "advertorials". Indeed, some of the articles I read from "industry voices" proceed to describe some very specific, not widely recognized problem, and then lay out a solution: which, coincidentally, happens to be exactly the problem the author's company addresses! This can be self-serving and less than objective.

Let's hope that industry publications will strike a healthy balance between problems encountered by in-the-trenches engineers and objective analysis of the major issues and trends. There is significant value in traditional journalism. What else are you gonna do, get all your news and opinions from blogs??? :-)

Intel Uber Alles?

Intel and the Power of Having a Monopoly - Seeking Alpha is an analysis of Intel's long-term business prospects from an investment advisor's perspective. The author concludes that Intel has a very bright future.

Reading it, it makes it sound as though AMD might was well raise the white flag right now. Intel is the Borg.

I think this analysis is mostly right, but AMD has surprised us once in the past. It will be interesting to watch if they can come back to fight another day.

Cooley Does Gary Smith?

Cooley Does Gary Smith is a webcast with a cheesy title but a nice discussion of emerging EDA tools from DAC this year. It's worth a watch to get ideas for companies to keep an eye on.

I like Gary Smith's perspective, even though I don't agree with all of his picks. His picks I'm not familiar with are interesting, and for the tools that I use or am interested in, I know that his take is pretty good.

Great article on Statistical STA

EETimes.com - Practical Applications of Statistical Static Timing Analysis is a great article on statistical timing analysis! Quite in-depth and comprehensive for a two-page article.

Interesting that the authors are from Cadence. I didn't know they were big players in the STA arena. I know they have an "Encounter" timing system, but I'm not familiar with how advanced or accepted it is.

The article reinforces my view that statistical STA is "not ready for PrimeTime". That pun is not a slam against Synopsys! I mean that there needs to be a lot more support from the foundries and understanding by the design community before there's much adoption of SSTA for production chip timing.

Another good article, which was just published and is written by Extreme DA's founder, is Statistical static timing analysis: A view from the future.

The EDA Dozen (Startups to Watch)

We need more excitement in the EDA industry after the layoffs of analysts and journalists following the field. Here's a start. The EDA Dozen lists that the top start-ups as anointed by EE Times.

For some of these, I'm very familiar and interested in what they're doing. For others, I can hardly understand how their technology works and how likely it is to catch on. I'll let you determine the What's Hot and What's Not for yourselves, but this list can get it started.

Fare Ye Well, Richard Goering

I had to do a double-take when I read Gabe Moretti's column The Week after DAC: some lingering thoughts | EDA DesignLine. Buried therein was the comment about "where the industry is going, a clear indication came this week with the layoff of Richard Goering, the deacon of the EDA journalists core". At first I skimmed over this, thinking that he was talking about Gary Smith, whose departure from Dataquest has been previously lamented. But no, Richard Goering, the main EDA journalist at EE Times forever, has been laid off!

This is a sad development, both for what it may say about the EDA and Journalism industries (I love both), and personally for Mr. Goering, whose writing I have long admired. Let's hope he lands on his feet and happily applies his skills elsewhere.

Other mentions of the news:

• Richard Goering gone from EETimes?
• Another Grim Day for EDA: Richard Goering laid off from EE Times--CMP layoffs

Q: Whither EDA? A: Private Equity?

Welcome to DAC week! I'm not there, but I expect to see a flurry of announcements and will be looking to keep up with things in EE Times.

This morning's paper has a story about "private equity" firms being interested in investing in Cadence: Cadence would offer buyer steady cash flow. And, an investing blog has Cadence Design Negotiates With Buyout Firms.

This is all at the rumor stage, but it's interesting in what it says about EDA. Rather than being a high-growth industry where one might make several times investment by picking the right hot technology, this is more about lucrative cash flows coming from software maintenance agreements.

If private equity firms become players in our industry, how will this change them? Will it lead to "slash and burn" of R&D, just trying to milk the recurring revenue from existing products? But how could such an approach fund the R&D to keep pace with the changes and challenges following from Moore's Law?

Update: An EE Times blog posting on dynamics of the EDA business. And, a YouTube interview with Gary Smith and his DAC preview. EDA gets hip!

More Updates: Richard Goering weighs in.

DAC Linkfest

Last year, I went to DAC in San Francisco, and I made a number of posts to my blog both before and after the 2006 conference:

• DAC is Here!
• Gary Smith's Must-See List
• Cooley's Must See List for DAC 2006
• 2006 DAC Report

This year, I'm not going to DAC in San Diego, but I thought I'd at least "phone it in" for my blog. With due credit to the EE Times' Richard Goering and other professional journalists, here's your one-stop 2007 DAC blog nexus:

• What's coming up for DAC. Less DFM & ESL hype, more functional verification, STA, and low-power.
• 40 new exhibitors at DAC
• Missing in action at DAC 2007
• A "what's hot" list for DAC 2007
• DAC & DFM – Once More, with Feeling I can't tell who the author of this article is. But judging by the site and the length of the article, I think it must be "EDA Penny".
• John Cooley's DAC Cheesy Must-See List. John hasn't posted his list as of this writing, but it should appear soon at his DeepChip web site.

Existentialist EDA

I'm getting tired (so tired! --Bauhaus) of waiting on vendors who promise that all our problems with their product will be fixed in the next release!

I told an EDA vendor that waiting for their tool to improve reminded me of the play Waiting for Godot. I thought this quite clever, but they didn't seem to. Maybe they didn't have to read it in college?

It might be fun to cast EDA persons into the play. Who would play the roles?

Vladimir

The tramp who struts about stiff-legged due to a painful bladder condition.

Estragon

The tramp who complains of his ill-fitting boots

Pozzo

cruel but lyrically gifted man

Lucky

servant

The Boy

messenger

Godot

?

Here's my literary interpretation:

• Clearly, Vladimir and Estragon are the afflicted customers.
• Pozzo is either the sales or marketing guy (I often forget the difference).
• Lucky is the poor FAE.
• The Boy is post-sales support.
• Godot is ??? Hey, I don't have all the answers, use your imagination!

Something Completely Different (but Worthy)

Dear readers,

Off topic, though perhaps a reason for the decline in my posting frequency since the beginning of the year. For the past several months, I've been supporting a program that raises awareness and funds for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. This charity funds blood cancer research and patient services.

The program I'm part of is called Team in Training. Every season of every year, hundreds of runners, cyclists, and triathletes come together to train for a signature endurance event (e.g., marathon, century ride, or triathlon). More importantly, we collectively raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to help find a cure for cancer and to help those currently afflicted. We do this by getting sponsorship donations to the Society from our friends, families, and colleagues. Why not give blog readers a chance to help, too? That's where you come in. If your curiosity is piqued, and you'd like to read the rest of the story and perhaps make a donation to a very worth charity, please take a look at my Team in Training page. There you will find a link to another blog I've been keeping, "New Rider on the Purple Stage", which describes my cycling season in pictures and words. Please note that my season culminates in a few weeks, and the last day for donations for this season is May 21, 2007.

Thanks for reading.

John

Executive Blogging

As seen on Dilbert.com:

Pretty funny, but hopefully not prevalent in our industry. For example, I recently started reading Jonathan's Blog by the CEO of Sun Microsystems, and it's pretty substantive and useful.

What's Special About This Number?

What's Special About This Number? was featured in IEEE Spectrum. It's an interesting list of factoids for past, present and future fans of mathematics.

Enjoy!

"How-to" SPICE Book

It's been several years since I've run SPICE myself, but I'm finding it increasingly needed even for a RTL/gate-level engineer. Could anyone recommend some really good SPICE books, which aren't just a reference but show you how to do things? You can post your recommendations and advice here as comments. The "things" I'd be most interested in doing would be characterizing digital standard cells and analyzing IC interconnect.

I looked at Amazon.com and didn't find a lot of books like this (no "SPICE for Dummies"?), but these two look interesting. Before I or my company spends a chunk of change, do you know these titles and how useful they are?

Legend of Test

Peggy Aycinena did a fine interview with Tom Williams, truly one of the giants in the field of Test. The guy invented full-scan DFT in the 1970s! Can you believe that? It's remarkable that his career spans 40 years, and he's been productive throughout. He's published many seminal Test papers, and has received the "Best Paper" award at DAC.

Be sure to go to the last page and see a list of his self-selected most important papers.

Hither ASIC

q.v. my earlier posting Whither ASIC, EE Times just ran a story on the declining activity in the ASIC business.

It's a thorough survey of what's happening in the business. I agree that designs need to see more IP reuse -- the extreme case is to use an ASSP. And I'm skeptical of Structured ASIC, and it seems the market has also given that idea the thumbs down. But the article didn't mention the trend of more fabless companies finding ways to do COT rather than ASIC design, possibly through "virtual ASIC vendors" like eSilicon or Open Silicon.

Intel to Build Fab in China

"Our goal in China is to support a transition from 'manufactured in China' to 'innovated in China'"
--Intel CEO Paul Otellini

Ah, globalization!

Whither ASIC

I'm surprised by how bad of shape the traditional ASIC business is in. Are any companies making money? Only IBM Microelectronics?

Several of the Japanese semiconductor powerhouses are cutting way back (or closing) their US ASIC engineering. Today a friend told me that LSI Logic isn't doing ASICs any more! Is that right?

The vendors that are doing the best have attractive IP portfolios, like IBM or TI. Those that historically relied on manufacturing process (e.g., Japanese) and left IP entirely up to the customer aren't faring well.

I'm especially surprised that even fabless chip startups aren't using ASIC vendors! They invest in the COT model or the "virtual ASIC" model, contracting with a number of service providers. I would have thought that the integration value-add of ASIC vendors would be even more attractive in these days of worrying about signal integrity, variability and DFM. Don't chip designers want "one throat to choke" when things going wrong?

We may not have ASIC vendors to kick around for long.

Britney Spears guide to Semiconductor Physics

Here's some fun on a Friday. EE Times gave me the link to this crucial technical reference, Britney Spears guide to Semiconductor Physics - The physics of optoelectronic technology . The material is technically sound and more accessible than a textbook.

Check it out if you don't mind gratuitous pictures of Ms. Spears. What's next, Paris Hilton's analysis of the Traveling Salesman Problem? (a Hilton ought to help with that ;-)

Immortal, Indeed

Those of you who read the print edition of EE Times may recall a funky little contest/feature that ran at the back of the paper, "Immortal Works". I think I can remember this *always* being part of the paper, even going back to the 1980s. Here's the latest version I could find.

Last month, EE Times went through a redesign. There are many changes to the organization and layout of the paper. It's actually printed on smaller (shorter and narrower) paper than before, in line with several major mainstream papers. More cost reductions from the ink and paper crowd, probably. I actually like the smaller format -- it's easier to carry around and peruse at opportune moments.

But I won't like if Immortal Works has been canned! It's missing from the redesigned print edition! According to the editors' explanation The new EE Times: more than a redesign:

Taking a hiatus will be Immortal Works, our longtime caption-writing contest of which many of you are devoted fans. We're moving the feature online, where the audience interaction is fast, efficient and easy.

Like I said, it was a sort of goofy feature. And even though I never had the time (or more likely, the wit) to submit an entry, I miss this quirky part of EE history! Immortal Works, where art thou?