What's PR got to do with it? 
Ed Lee
Ed Lee has been around EDA since before it was called EDA. He cut his teeth doing Public Relations with Valid, Cadence, Mentor, ECAD, VLSI, AMI and a host of others. And he has introduced more than three dozen EDA startups, ranging from the first commercial IP company to the latest statistical … More » Predictions 2012 – Standards and Social MediaJanuary 12th, 2012 by Ed Lee
This year, we’ll see an old standards battle get resolved. Now that all the players are participating in the IEEE Standard 1801 project (IEEE Standard for Design and Verification of Low Power Integrated Circuits), we can finally put the UPF-CPF debate to rest. Let’s hope that peace will reign and the temptation to fight one more time about a single low power standard will be overcome.
Social media will become less of a curiosity or a perceived waste of time for engineers. We’ll see more EDA customers helping answer each other’s questions and sharing more information (nothing proprietary, of course). LinkedIn discussions will have more depth, not simply people posting “read my blog”.
Facebook will remain more of a social vehicle, and for many engineers of our generation, a misunderstood channel. YouTube videos that provide good content – “how-to” and learning opportunities – will become popular. Twitter will remain a mystery for most, while a minority will find it of much value (include me in the minority). Marketers who spam social media channels with marketing-speak will be shunned. And, we’ll have some great guests on Conversation Central radio.
Karen Bartleson Predictions 2012 – Mergers and 3DJanuary 11th, 2012 by Ed Lee
And the predictions begin……
With regard to “Events” – 2012 will be a year of further acquisition and consolidation for both the EDA and IP industries. Some new faces will join the dance, with significant resources at their disposal. It is likely the “Big 3” will have at least one new name in a year’s time. With regard to “Breakthroughs” – it’s a different story. 3D stacked-die design still won’t be mainstream in a year’s time. True hardware/software co-design will still be a developmental area and verification will still be as hard as ever. Many panels, blogs, seminars and special conference sessions will debate these topics throughout the year with great hope and excitement, however. Mike Gianfagna
Will it be the end of the world or just shrinking EDA? Mystics Muse about Money, Mergers and Multiple SoCsJanuary 10th, 2012 by Ed Lee
Step aside Nostradamus and Mayans. The real earth-shattering events of 2012 could take place in the EDA & IP industries. We asked industry friends, associates, clients and media folks to ponder what industry-shattering events or breakthroughs we might see in EDA & IP this coming year. So what topics came up? Consolidation of the industry; standards; various technologies, 3D being the most discussed; even one man’s blatant personal goal. 🙂 We heard the word “challenge” a lot, for the big vendors and the smaller companies. So will two foundry-led EDA mega-companies duke it out with a third mega-company, as one diviner foretold? Tough to tell how tongue-in-cheek his prophesy was. So we’ll post the visionary comments of one individual at a time, in the order they came into us. We found them enlightening and even entertaining! We hope you do too. Liz and Ed Demler looks into low Magma buyout priceDecember 13th, 2011 by Ed Lee
Mike Demler of EE Daily News raises intriguing questions about the price of the Magma buyout. Seems too low, says Demler. And there’s more to come. http://www.eedailynews.com/2011/12/magma-sale-to-synopsys-causes-eruption.html What hiding from the competition will get youOctober 11th, 2011 by Ed Lee
I’m sometimes mystified when we meet a prospect or new client. We’re supposed to handle the public introduction of the company: i.e., tell its differentiating story, nail down the supporting messages through every written or spoken effort we and the client make. That’s not the mystifying part. We can find something to tout, always. (Look! This car has FOUR, count ’em, FOUR tires AND a steering wheel!) Seriously, I’m speechless when, during the course of digging into the company’s value proposition, we hear, “but we don’t want to tip off the competition.” Um…we’d never get into the family jewels. But at the story and supporting message set level, we do need to give a level of detail that shows there’s something different, new, noteworthy, NEWSworthy to the company’s editorial, blogging, analyst customer community. It’d be like asking your lawyer to represent you in court, but not telling that lawyer everything that’s relevant to the case. So the question I’d like to ask is: do you want to launch your company into the public domain, tell potential customers why you’ve got a different approach and technology that’s worth buying (and make money doing so)? Or do you want to hide from the competition and everyone else, including potential customers?
Frying Fish with Amelia DaltonSeptember 19th, 2011 by Ed Lee
I (Liz Massingill) recently had a chance to chat with Amelia Dalton, News Editor at EE Journal and host of the weekly webcast, Fish Fry. She shared her thoughts on the future of EE Publishing and EDA.
Liz: You must have the most unique feature in EE publishing – your weekly webcast on EE Journal. How did you come up with the idea of Fish Fry? Amelia: I’ve been hosting an engineering webcast series called Chalk Talk for about five years now. Chalk Talk has been really successful and has grown a huge fan base, but it is a commercial series where a company sponsors each episode, and I wanted to do something more editorial that had the same sense of humor and spirit as Chalk Talk. I’m the news editor for EE Journal, so every press release in the electronic industry comes across my desk. As you know – a few of these press releases are interesting and useful, and some are completely ridiculous and quite funny. Liz: But I’m sure you’ve never gotten one of those from us, right? 😉 Amelia: I came up with the idea for an engineering news-related podcast as a fun-finale to our editorial week. I wanted to report the interesting real news, and to make fun of some of the… less useful stuff. Liz: Your irreverent humor has certainly appealed to me. Amelia: I wanted to capture some of the engineering culture and something about the lifestyle and the more human side of engineers. I envisioned something for electronic engineers that was like a combination of “The Daily Show” and “This American Life.” I also wanted to build in a good measure of nerd appeal. I’ve kept pretty true to that concept for the first year of Fish Fry. Liz: So who is your target audience?
Amelia: My target audience is definitely the career electronic engineer, but as it is with the rest of our editorial content at EE Journal, I want my Fish Fry broadcasts to be approachable for anyone who works in EE and maybe even those ultra-nerdy friends of mine! One of the things we’ve always worked to do is make complex technology accessible for less technical people and to put the deep-nerd stuff in perspective for the hard-core engineering brain. I think Fish Fry captures that. Liz: Indeed it does. How have they reacted to your on-air persona? For me, that’s the draw that keeps me coming back!
Amelia: The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. I think my on-air persona is a big part of that, as well as the slightly irreverent take we have on technology news! I very diligently try to put myself in the place of the “average” engineer and investigate each topic I pursue from that angle. It doesn’t hurt to throw in the occasional Star Trek reference either. Liz: Beam me up, Scotty. Tell us about your background before Fish Fry?
Amelia: Not many people know this, but my father was a voice over talent and radio DJ for many years when I was a child. I heard “Member FDIC” more times than I could count! Before we launched Fish Fry, I had been News Editor and Chalk Talk webcast host for 5 years at Techfocus Media, which I continue to do to this day and that experience has been absolutely invaluable. Liz: What interests you most about EDA? Or does it?
Amelia: EDA is a very unique industry and I definitely think it doesn’t get the credit it deserves – or it’s share of the electronics industry pie. It is really the backbone of the modern electronics industry, but your average consumer may not even know EDA exists and your average engineer may not know much about it, other than the tools he or she is already familiar with. Liz: I know one of those engineers. What can we do about that? Amelia: One of the things I try to do is to help the average engineer – who is the customer of the EDA industry – better understand the companies and people behind the tools they are using every day. I think it’s easy to expect EDA tools to cost and behave just like mass-market commercial software, but EDA tools are a completely different thing. I can’t give EDA the revenue share it deserves – they need to figure that out on their own, but I can at least raise the awareness of the importance of EDA and the challenges that industry faces among their target customers.
Liz: And believe me, we all appreciate that. What is your opinion of the social media craze and its influence on the EDA industry or the EE industry? How has social media influenced or altered editorial and communications in general in EDA and the EE industry?
Amelia: Engineers have been using social media for a lot longer than this most recent craze, truth be told. If you think about it – Usenet was the first social media, and engineers were using that voraciously before the web even existed. I think a large community of engineers are still rooted in those venues and haven’t been so fast to make the move to newer properties like Facebook and Twitter.
Liz: What do you think is holding them back? Amelia: I think most EDA companies think they should be involved in some level of social media, but they are not sure how to start. There are some intrinsic problems with EE and social media, and the biggest is the lack of information that companies (and the engineers who work for them) are allowed to divulge. The center of social media is about sharing information, and since NDAs, project secrecy, IP protection, and paranoia rule the roost at most companies, I’m not sure the EE community at large is able to take advantage of a lot of the community power of social media – at least for direct work-related content. To make things even more complicated, a lot of companies still block social media sites on their company networks. Engineers will still find ways to share information, though, whether it includes personal Facebook accounts or anonymous posts like what is found at John Cooley’s Deep Chip…But overall, I believe that social media as we see it today will have an altogether different role within EE than it does to the rest of the world. Our philosophy on social media has been to be all-inclusive. When I post a new Fish Fry, for example, we generally put it on the front page of EE Journal, in the e-mail newsletters, on facebook, on twitter, on RSS, and we provide a mobile version. We want to cover all the bases. I think we dropped the 2-cans and a string version just a couple of weeks ago. Liz: What about the pigeon and the message in a bottle? 😉 What does the future hold for EDA?
Amelia: Well, that’s a very good question! I believe that the business model for EDA as a whole needs to see some serious changes in the future…when that will happen, well, I’m not sure I can predict that. I can see how more smaller niche tool companies will be snatched up by the bigger fish, so they can have more robust tool offerings, but I think we need to see more real innovation from inside the big EDA companies as well. Liz: Do you see other types of companies gobbling up small EDA vendors? Amelia: I also see chip companies snatching up smaller tool companies as well, to add to their tool suites, so that is providing some competition for commercial EDA companies that they haven’t seen much in a few decades – in-house tools competing with commercial ones… Who will be left when the dust settles, who knows?…it will be very interesting to watch it all unfold.
Liz: Along with a plethora of editorial material. Speaking of editorial, what’s your 2 cents on EE publishing. Where’s it going?
Amelia: I believe EE publishing is going to be an online only endeavor in the near future. As we have made our mission from the start here at Techfocus Media, I think the electronics industry trade press needs to continuously find new avenues to reach the EE community of the world. Publishers must be flexible with content delivery as they maintain editorial intergity. I am deeply concerned by the number of publications that have fallen back re-writing press releases, relying on contributed articles, and the “pay for play” mode of editorial and I am very proud that EE Journal has never and will never go that way. I believe that we, as the trade press need to report the truth wherever it may lay, and to be loyal to our audience. Publishers need to find ways to make a viable business for themselves without violating those underlying principles of responsible and ethical journalism. It’s possible, and taking the easy short cuts is just plain lazy. Liz: I like the way you think, Amelia. And I think I’ve just been…….fried. If you want to be fried, you can catch Amelia every week on Fish Fry at: http://www.eejournal.com/archives/fish-fry/
Like us on Facebook GABE on EDAAugust 23rd, 2011 by Ed Lee
I recently chatted with Gabe Moretti, editor-in-chief of GABE on EDA, where he shared some of his thoughts on the business of EDA and EDA publishing.
Liz: You weren’t always in publishing. You have over 30 years in EDA tool development, along with EDA senior management roles. Then you went into electronics editorial. You’ve written for many of the surviving publications. If I remember correctly, you were at EDN, EE Times, EDA Café, DACazine. Why did you go into electronics editorial?
Gabe: After Mentor acquired VeriBest there was no immediate open position at Mentor that satisfied my career goals, so I left. I could then re-evaluate my role within the industry and try something new. EDN convinced me that I was the person they were searching for to cover EDA. It sounded like a good opportunity to try something new and something that would have very little negative impact on my career in the short term if I were not successful. That was eleven years ago, and I am still doing it, albeit in a very different way. At EDN I was a full time employee. All the other “jobs” were actually consulting assignments. DACezine was a very interesting experiment that did not last because the DAC executive committee that changes every year never found a fiscal model for the publication.
Liz: What led you to publish your own?
Gabe: As you know the publishing industry is going through a revolution. Before the introduction of “social media” a relatively small number of chosen professionals were the source of information and editorial. They were employees of corporations with a tradition in print media that were very able to generate a profit from the industry. The on-line publishing world has radically changed that, and publishing corporations are still struggling to understand the profit making mechanism, assuming there is one. So I decided to try a new model and see how it compares with the rest. It is actually too soon to know, but I think it is worth the investment. I believe that one thing is already proven: on line publishing cannot sustain the organizational overhead that print publishing has. Liz: Tell us a little bit about GABE on EDA.
Gabe: GABE on EDA is my umbrella business, and my main web page. At this point there are three separate ventures under it. One is EDAMarket, the model I referred to in my previous answer. EDAMarket is an experiment in financial terms, not in content form. It attempts to answer the question: is there an alternative to advertisement sales (sponsorships are just another form of advertisement) to support an information channel? I looked at selling individual subscriptions, but in an environment where distributing copies of copyrighted material is unfortunately becoming the norm, I did not find the model compelling. So EDAMarket is supported through an annual corporate subscription. The corporate subscribers get privileged coverage and an alternative source to their messaging. The newsletter Assembling The Future is the second activity. As the name implies, the subjects covered are forward looking. Contributions are open to anyone. Present conditions are only taken as the starting point for a projection of what the industry needs and were it can be in the next five years. The third activity is my consulting. At this point it is still in the startup phase, but I hope to grow it. It will be my channel to more directly impact the progress in our industry. Liz: What is the focus of your consulting business?
Gabe: I am helping companies with strategic marketing plans and tactical product positioning. Liz: What is unique about GABE on EDA, and who is your target audience? Gabe: Even when I was in charge of engineering projects I always had an eye toward the business aspect of the project. After all, I chose engineering because it was a more secure avenue to a US citizenship than finance. Luckily I have found that I can be successful doing a number of things. GABE on EDA takes advantage of my business degree, my Computer Science degree, and my training in writing (thanks to attending Italian schools that emphasized composition and independent thinking).
I think that the uniqueness of GABE on EDA rests on its target audience. My readers are executives and senior management professionals, as well as designers that are interested in the business aspect of their industry. I am a firm believer that methods are more important than tools, and that tools are developed and sold in order to generate a profit. Liz: You’ve been witness to a lot of change in the EDA publishing industry. What direction do you think EDA & IP media will take? In 5 years? 10 years? Gabe: As I said before this is a difficult question to answer. I think that the final choice will rest on the quality of the content developed within a specific financial model. The audience, after all, is interested in information, not data. Too often we confuse the two and equate data to information. Although reliable and accurate data is necessary to generate information, the latter is the more valuable commodity in a world that is increasingly competitive and short of time.
Liz: I think we do equate data and information. How do you define each of them and can you explain the difference between the two? Gabe: Data is a collection of raw items that require analysis in order to become information. As an example data is: there has not been any hurricane in Florida since 2004. Information is: due to new weather patterns in the upper atmosphere a system of high pressure has been reasonably stationary over Florida during hurricane season, building a barrier around the region to the air movements conductive to hurricanes. Liz: In other words, information is more than just raw data, and it is valued much more by the public if it is given with some trusted analysis. How do you expect EDA publishing to evolve? Gabe: I think the winning strategy will be based on the electronic delivery of information at a profit. There is so much excitement about free stuff: open source is a perfect example of the deterioration of the capitalistic system, and the publishing world has in many ways gone open source, meaning that there are many publications, now called blogs, to choose from and almost all of them free. Yet, authors, like engineers, need to make money to live and pursue happiness. I think the evolution of electronic publishing will depend in large part, not from the publishing industry but from a new model of the internet that recognizes intellectual property as separate from generic data. Liz: Speaking of delivering information for profit, what about pay for play? What is pay for play? How close are we to total pay for play? Is it good or bad for the industry? Gabe: I am a bit surprised that the term “pay for play” is part of the description of a way to use electronic publishing. Pay for play has always been around, even during the paper only era. Certainly I experienced it since I joined the publishing industry. To be sure some organizations, EDN for one, kept advertising separate from content generation organizationally, but you had to be a moron not to understand that subjects were covered only because they generated advertising revenue. If you need an example close to home, look at the amount of coverage the EDA industry receives today in for-profit publications that cover the electronic industry. Why has it gone down? The answer you get from every publisher is: EDA vendors do not advertise. Liz: [raises eyebrows] That’s interesting. Gabe: Again, there must be a profit or professionals will not engage. As long as it is understood that professional content is generated by people that are paid to communicate, the impact will be neutral. Time is not free, and bloggers that write because they have free time to do so, are amateurs by definition, no matter how wise they might be. I know that for some writers a blog is a powerful marketing tool: I realize that my website, is an indirect marketing tool for my consulting as well. But that is not its primary intent. Any of my endeavors will not survive unless they can justify themselves financially. Liz: Likewise, where is the EDA industry itself going? What are a couple of hot issues in our industry right now and what do you think will surface in the next couple of years? Gabe: The major problem facing the EDA industry is the dwindling number of customers that can afford to use the latest process technology. Manufacturing at 20nm and below is so expensive that most OEMs will choose not to use these processes. Yet the EDA industry has been relying on its customers going from one process node to the next as clockwork to generate profits. License renewals are fine but more expensive licenses for new tools are what keeps the industry going. EDA vendors must find a new financial model before it is too late. By the way this new reality will also significantly impact startups.
A leading company like Synopsys, for example, will very soon have to address two very distinct markets: the leading edge OEMs producing high volume, high margin products, and the average OEMs targeting the price sensitive consumers market. There will be producers of Ferrari like products, and KIA like products: both have a market, but they are built very differently and with different tools. What is confusing now is that the tools look very similar, so people think they are and will be the same. The EDA vendor that successfully realizes the distinction and serves the two market accordingly will be successful. The PCB market is already using this model, you just have to look at Cadence that offers both Allegro and Orcad products to two very different segments of the PCB development market. Liz: And here’s the big question…..EDA360 – what the heck is it and where is it going? What do all of those realizations mean?….especially now?
Gabe: I am a fan of EDA360, and probably its first independent supporter, I have to admit. This document is the first public admission that the EDA industry is at an inflection point and needs to understand some very important points. The first one is the role that software plays and will play in future electronic systems. I do not know the real reason John Bruggeman used in choosing the title of its document. But I will tell you that the first picture in my mind was the IBM 360. That mainframe revolutionized business computing both because of its hardware capabilities and its software tools. The message of EDA360 is that our industry must not only be aware of the heterogeneous systems electronics are part of, but that it must offer application oriented solutions that make it more efficient and profitable to develop and integrate the electronics subsystem in those applications. Liz: I see the 360 reference as meaning a complete change in thinking. So yes, that would be revolutionary. And how do the three realizations realize these solutions? Gabe: The “realizations” are a link to the past. No one can build a house without foundations. The future must be anchored to the present. So System Realization takes an idea to a design, SoC realization transforms the design into the representation of an electronic product, and Silicon Realization prepares the product for manufacture. Are these the same steps we will need a few years from now? In general yes, but the contents of the steps will be different. Liz: Anything in the offing for Gabe or GABE on EDA?
Gabe: Not immediately. I think that EDAMarket, Assembling The Future, and my consulting activities cover the directions I would like to go. But I am very pragmatic, so I will change as the industry changes and hopefully I will play some role in the changes, both in the publishing world and, more importantly for me, in the EDA world. Liz: Gabe, I have no doubt that you will continue to play a vital role in delivering “information” as the EDA industry evolves.
Mike Demler on publishing and EDAAugust 8th, 2011 by Ed Lee
I (Liz Massingill) was lucky enough to sit down recently and chat with Mike Demler about his new publication and his thoughts on publishing and the EDA industry.
Liz: Tell us about your new publication, EE Daily News. When did you get EEDN up and running? Mike: As you may know, I had a personal blog called “The World is Analog” for several years. When I learned that I (along with two other editors from EDN Magazine and EETimes) would be laid off by UBM Electronics at the end of May, I decided to continue my work by creating my own news site. One motivation was that I learned from previous layoffs how vital it is to keep one’s network active while pursuing new opportunities. Thanks to Google apps and the community of open source template developers, I was able to convert my blog and build a completely new site in less than a week of my “spare time”. Liz: Wow! That’s impressive. Who is your target audience? Mike: As the name implies, my target audience starts with EEs. That’s a broad space, but I expect that hardware/software engineers, technical managers and marketers, or anyone with an interest in developments in the areas of electronics technology that I cover will find something interesting on my site. From my work on EE Daily News I also periodically am asked to consult for investors, or get quoted in other publications, where they need specialized expertise in the subjects I cover on EE Daily News. Liz: EEDN…not exactly a techie publication (like EDN), not exactly like a news publications (like EE Times), not quite a straight blog (like any number of blogspots). Seems that you veer toward news and publish analysis or your opinion when a significant topic comes along, like the Apache acquisition or the Hogan-McLellan pronouncements on what technology areas will make money in EDA at the startup level.
What do you want to bring to your readers that’s not already been offered? Mike: First, I believe that the reduction of editorial staff at the major publications results in a coverage gap, and that creates an opportunity for someone with the expertise to fill it. EDN lost two editors, and EETimes laid off their semiconductor editor, so there has to be a fall off in reporting. Liz: You certainly filled the gap. Mike: Thanks! Second, my career has been unique in breadth and depth, so (at the risk of bragging) I don’t think there is any other publication or editor that can cover EDA, semiconductor technology, IC design, and the mobile/wireless ecosystem – all of which I do on the EE Daily News – the way that I can. The thing that really gets me jazzed is that there is now such a strong interrelationship of these topics, each of which I am so passionate about. Liz: Not everyone realizes that EDA is so integral in this relationship. I’m glad that you see it that way. Mike: And everyone wants to talk about mobile and wireless now. Even the device physics crowd at the last IEDM led off with a keynote on how the mobile revolution is driving the semiconductor industry. I am offering the only publication that provides expertise in each of these areas, and how they are related. You will find articles on the EE Daily News that speak to engineers on a deeply technical level, and also find business insight that reflects my dual EE/MBA background. Liz: You’ve been an EDA marketer, big organization editor and now editor-publisher. Any speculation on how your career’s all led inevitably to this juncture? Mike: <smiles> Inevitably? So you believe in fate? Sorry.. I just watched The Adjustment Bureau. Liz: Yeah, I admit it. There are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. Mike: I’m reminded of a quote that is attributed to Yogi Berra – “when you come to a fork in the road… take it!” I was first an IC designer for almost 20 years. That was something I decided I wanted to do as an undergrad EE student at the University of Buffalo. Being able to accomplish that goal, to work in the semiconductor industry, fulfilled what seemed like a far away fantasy for a poor kid growing up in Buffalo. I started authoring articles, and then a book, when I was designing ICs – so I think that has been a part of my skill set for a long time. Liz: What book? Mike: The book is “High-Speed Analog-to-Digital Conversion”, which is now 20 years old but still available from Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/High-Speed-Analog-Digital-Conversion-Michael/dp/0122090489). When I was laid off from Cadence, a career counselor that I worked with told me that I was a risk taker. At first that took me by surprise, since I never thought of myself that way, but listening to her I realized she was right. I left home after college and moved 2000 miles away to work for TI, without a moment’s hesitation. I left IC design to go into EDA sales and marketing, because I wanted to get more involved on the business side. Then I moved to California to do an EDA startup. Liz: What startup was that? The startup was Antrim Design Systems and I later became a wireless industry analyst by rebranding myself after being laid off at Synopsys. Those are all pretty crazy things to do, that could have gone really bad I guess, but they seemed like the right path to take at the time. Liz: But you followed your passion. There is something to be said for that. And look at where you are. Mike: I’d love to work in marketing again, but I find myself at this juncture with what looks like another opportunity based on my journalism experience. I doubt that it’s the last fork in the road, but I’m taking it. I am also doing some part time work with Open Systems Media, as editor for their DSP-FPGA publications.
Liz: What are your plans for expanding EEDN to include guest blogs, op-eds, white papers, how-tos, etc.? Mike: Those are all great ideas, which I just haven’t had the time to explore yet while I booted up the site. I am totally open to having other contributors, so please contact me if you are interested. As far as white papers go, I think that would likely come with a sponsorship. I am open to that as well, since I also need to start working on monetizing the site. One of the things I want people to know, to differentiate the EE Daily News, is that I will never publish something that I have not reviewed. The EE Daily News will never just republish press releases. When I do write an article based on a press release, you can be assured that I read it and tried to add more context and perspective. My recent article on a survey of potential tablet PC buyers is an example of that. Liz: Good to know, Mike. To me, your added value CERTAINLY is your opinion. We need more of that! Speaking of publishing practices, what will EDA & IP publishing look like in 5 years? Mike: It won’t take 5 years, but publishing in general will become more dynamic, real-time, and interactive. The traditional media for the semiconductor, EDA & IP space are still struggling to figure this out. What’s suffering in the meantime is the need to produce independent editorial content. Too many publishers are unfortunately transforming into mere aggregators and distributors of hyperlinks. Engineers detest company-sponsored marketing-produced promotional pitches that lack substance. To succeed, publishers will need to continue supporting technology journalism or risk losing their audience. Content, whatever form it takes, will always be king. But, it must be credible content. I see the 4G connected tablets, like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 or Motorola Xoom, as ideal devices for next-generation publishing and interactive media consumption. It will be interesting to watch developments in that space over the next year or two. Liz: Can you expand on this? Mike: Sure. Other industries are far ahead of EDA/IP in how they are using online and mobile media to engage with their communities. It’s not a completely fair comparison, since the EDA/IP audience is very technical and perhaps not as social, but there’s something to be learned. For starters, look at how magazines, books and newspapers are moving to tablets and eReaders. This offers an opportunity to integrate richer multimedia content, well beyond putting links to YouTube on your site. With the 4G LTE tablets, and companies like nVIDIA putting dual-core processors with HD video in them, you’ve got some screaming machines! I currently get a faster connection with my LTE smartphone than I get from my WiFi cable-modem combo at home. Imagine what you can do with live event reporting on a portable device like a tablet. You will be able to take a Twitter stream to the next level with live video and 2-way voice communications, to an audience that is not tied to a desktop – anywhere in the world.
Liz: It will be exciting to see how these technological developments play out. Speaking of play, how close are we to total pay-for-play, in all its incarnations and using whatever labels various organizations have coined? Is it good or bad for the industry? Mike: If by pay-for-play you are referring to vendors getting preferred or guaranteed coverage in return for sponsorship, I would draw a clear line there. In editor-written material, there must never be any undisclosed arrangement, no secret quid pro quo, that influences the content. I certainly hope that other publications aren’t doing that! That would be very bad for the industry, and destroy all journalistic credibility. It goes back to my earlier comment, publications must support technology journalism or all we will have is ads. Our technical audience does not want that. We aren’t the fashion industry! Which is certainly not to say that I am against sponsorships (call me :)), but just as we do for events, they must be clearly disclosed in any and all materials that are being sponsored.
Liz: Yes, of course sponsorships should be disclosed. We hear about new directions for EDA and IP, how it’s an EDA360 world, or how we’re going to have to realize SoCs in order for vendors to, in effect, show investors they can make money. What are a couple of the raging issues in our industry right now and what will surface in the next couple of years? Mike: There are two sides to your question, the technical challenges and the question of what drives investment and company valuations. I need to wear both my EE and MBA hats for this one. The answers might get a little long. I’ve been around since long before there was an EDA industry, so to some extent there’s nothing new here. For the electronics companies, the end users of EDA and IP, business has been and always will be about product realization. So it’s an SoC now… big deal! EDA companies have never addressed whole product realization, because EDA companies were born from the economies of scale inherent in replacing internal point tools, especially as the industry moved to a fabless model. Sure, ASIC flows developed and the major EDA vendors’ catalogs of tools expanded (mostly through acquisition), but the whole product solution was never addressed. And we know what happened with bundle pricing. EDA inevitably became commoditized.
Liz: So where’s the value in EDA? Mike: There is certainly value to be had from aiding SoC realization, but no one EDA company can do that alone. More standards need to be developed, and seamless interoperability needs to be achieved. I would argue that the EDA companies aren’t even the ones to lead that. It must come from the semiconductor companies, similar to TSMC’s Open Innovation Platform. The top 10 or 20 semiconductor companies have been driving EDA R&D departments to get what they need individually, and now the industry needs more of a collaborative effort across the ecosystem. EDA360 may espouse that, but I don’t see it changing the trench warfare that EDA companies fight through inefficient proprietary barriers to interoperability. Look at what happened with SPICE models as an example. When I was at Meta Software, we could practically print money because we owned the Level 28 model. Foundries adopted it so fabless companies had to have it. But an industry standard BSIM model was developed that was eventually just as good. What happened to the SPICE simulator market? It grew! More competition and fewer artificial barriers is one of my prescriptions for EDA industry growth. Then, as Apache Design Solutions demonstrated so well, there is still a lot of value in solving difficult problems. There is no shortage of difficult problems yet to be solved in IC design. As the acquisitions of AWR and Apache also demonstrate, whole product solutions require addressing packaging and test issues. The job is far from over when the chip has been “taped out”. Liz: Thanks, Mike, for your insight into the publishing industry as it pertains to EDA. Mike Demler has a unique combination of engineering experience, business and product line management, with more than 25 years of professional experience spanning marketing, sales and operations, to R&D and technology journalism. He is currently the editor-in-chief of EE Daily News – http://www.eedailynews.com/. Like us on Facebook
Slidecast of Show Me the MoneyJune 21st, 2011 by Ed Lee
There’s been a lot of good feedback on Jim Hogan and Paul McLellan’s “Show Me the Money” presentation at DAC. If you missed it, here’s a webcast with the coinciding slides from the presentation. Much thanks to Mike Demler, editor of EE Daily News, for combining the two in this slidecast: Finding Love at DAC…..at AtrentaJune 19th, 2011 by Ed Lee
You saw the trailer……
Are you curious what happened next….whether this young man found love…..at DAC? In case, you missed it – here’s the rest of the story……
BTW the CTO of the SoC Realization Company expresses his views on the future of the technology and business of EDA and what’s needed in EDA tools in this video on System-Level Design…..
Full Disclosure: Lee PR works for Atrenta. Follow us on Facebook |
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