Meeting the Needs of the Electronic System Design Ecosystem and the Entire Supply Chain

Travel to SEMICON Taiwan and SEMICON Europa this fall put us in touch with groups of people interested in learning more about the role of the ESD Alliance within SEMI. Our conversations reinforced our conviction and SEMI’s that design and manufacturing are moving closer together and the reason we began our “Connecting the Divide” campaign.

Connecting the Divide, the centerpiece of our 2020 programs, is meant to help both the design and manufacturing communities gain a better understanding of each other’s ecosystems and challenges. It gives us a reason to review our mission and value propositions to ensure we continue to meet the needs of our system design ecosystem and the entire electronic product supply chain as we move forward.

The Electronic System Design Alliance (ESD Alliance) has a long history of supporting electronic design automation (EDA) going back to 1989 when it was founded as the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (EDAC). After assessing the market in 2016, we expanded our reach and changed the name of the organization to include developers and suppliers of semiconductor IP, embedded software, design services, and packaging and PCB/interconnect design.  Along with the EDA suppliers, they provide the software, services, intellectual property and hardware needed to design and verify semiconductors, associated software, packaging and interconnect technologies for the manufacturing of these products. They also need a voice, something we provide as part of our charter to communicate and promote the value of the design ecosystem as a vital component of the global electronics market.

We consider ourselves to be the forum to address technical, marketing, economic and legislative issues affecting the entire industry. We break it down to into five initiatives: risk management, growth and efficiency, industry voice, events and education and market information.

Risk management has two active committees. Our Export Committee represents all member companies with a unified voice in Washington, D.C., on export licensing and compliance issues. In conjunction with the Export Committee, we run an annual educational day at the National Defense University and host a day in Silicon Valley where future policy leaders learn how the semiconductor industry operates.

The License Management and Anti-Piracy committee has two key functions. The committee reviews technologies and best practices to help honest users operate within their license agreements, while addressing products and algorithms to hinder theft of member companies’ software and intellectual property.

Under Growth and Efficiency is the Interoperability (OS) Committee. It provides a forum for OS vendors to present and update member companies on their plans. Based on this, the committee publishes a roadmap for recommended platform support for all member companies. It sets expectations with users for supported platforms. This helps reduce member company resources and costs to support a wider range of platforms.

Market information is our Market Statistics Service, a popular program that serves as a source of up-to-date information and trends for the design ecosystem. We gather quarterly revenue data from member companies. The data is collected and aggregated by an outside accounting firm, so no individual company data is disclosed. Members receive access to the full report as part of member dues.

Our Emerging Companies Committee presents regular educational events and networking sessions geared toward startup and emerging companies in the design ecosystem to learn, network and gain access to leaders and executives from leading companies in our ecosystem.

We often combine the Emerging Companies Committee activities with our Events and Education initiative to host panel discussions about topics relevant to industry, such as the CEO Outlook. One event series in particular –– Jim Hogan’s “Crossing the Chasm” –– is always a crowd pleaser with his lively interviews of successful entrepreneurs. The ecosystem gathers to celebrate the yearly recipient of the Phil Kaufman Award at a dinner and ceremony.

Certainly, the ESD Alliance has plenty to offer the electronic product supply chain from design through manufacturing. Since design is moving closer to manufacturing, consider becoming a member of the ESD Alliance to be part of “Connecting the Divide.”

Contact me at bsmith@semi.org to learn more.

Engage with the ESD Alliance at:

Website: www.esd-alliance.org

ESD Alliance Bridging the Frontier blog: http://bit.ly/2oJUVzl

Twitter: @ESDAlliance

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8424092

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ESDAlliance

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