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The global electronics industry was once characterized by neatly stacked vertical companies. For example, ASIC vendors historically created their own process-specific libraries, developed their own design tools and sign-off methodologies, and operated their own foundries. That all changed over the last decade, a period in which many of these companies spun out large parts of their businesses and divested themselves of ever more expensive manufacturing capacity. The result is the current industry landscape—a horizontal network of design chain suppliers spread around the globe. For a time, this disaggregation brought desired business efficiencies, but with the advent of nanometer process nodes, cracks inevitably began to appear in IC design supply chain. Whereas above 130-nanometer companies could afford to ignore many second- and third-order effects such as noise and crosstalk, today’s designs require deeper collaboration among the various industry players in order to overcome the effects of physics— especially on signal integrity, dynamic and leakage power consumption, and manufacturability.
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