Summer’s almost over, school’s back in session and it’s time to look forward. It’s an even better time to join the ESD Alliance, a SEMI Technology Community. The reasons for joining are numerous.

Much of the ESD Alliance member value is derived from the various technical- and business-focused committees. With committee membership consisting of subject matter experts in our member companies, these groups address key areas of common concern for our industry. 

One such area is the quarterly SEMI Electronic Design Market Data (EDMD) report, a resource that is part of the Market Information initiative. Public and private EDA, semiconductor IP and services companies provide detailed revenue data in confidence to an independent auditing firm. The aggregated data is reported by detailed product categories and geographic regions on a quarterly basis. Each report includes tables and graphs with current and recent revenue and employment trends by quarter, allowing companies to review trends affecting their specific product segments.

The increasingly important Risk Management initiative includes SEMI’s Washington, D.C. policy and advocacy office, representing all member companies with a unified voice on export licensing and compliance issues. We also help to train future government leaders in the semiconductor design ecosystem to enable more educated future decisions affecting the industry.

The License Management and Anti-Piracy Committee reviews third-party licensing management software used by member companies for issues, updates and best practices. A significant ongoing effort is the SEMI Server Certification Protocol (SSCP), a years-long joint development effort led by the ESD Alliance with committee members Cadence, Siemens EDA and Synopsys (see my previous blog post for details). The SSCP addresses software piracy by providing a means to assure that licenses are issued only by authorized servers, reducing software piracy and benefitting both software vendors and customers.
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