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 Bridging the Frontier
Bob Smith, Executive Director
Bob Smith, Executive Director
Bob Smith is Executive Director of the ESD Alliance responsible for its management and operations. Previously, Bob was senior vice president of Marketing and Business Development at Uniquify, responsible for brand development, positioning, strategy and business development activities. Bob began his … More »

Highlighting ESD Alliance Member Companies

 
May 30th, 2024 by Bob Smith, Executive Director

The ESD Alliance, a SEMI Technology Community, has a vibrant community of design tools companies and IP providers, all with great stories. Over the last few years, we worked with many of them to produce a collection of posts published on the SEMI website blog.

For the first time, we compiled the posts from 2023 and 1H 2024 … in case you missed any. Please enjoy them and consider working with us on a Q&A interview if your company hasn’t been part of this benefit program yet, one of many we offer members. If your company isn’t a member, consider joining to take advantage of them. Contact me at bsmith@semi.org or Nanette Collins who is manages our Public Relations efforts at nanette@nvc.com.

Keysight: Zeroing in on EDA Tool Interoperability With Keysight EDA

https://tinyurl.com/2vynhw98

February 13, 2023

Qualcomm: Speeding the Path to Industry Standardization with Accellera

https://tinyurl.com/mr2jvtt2

May 1, 2023

Silvaco: Applying AI in Fab Technology Co-Optimization

https://tinyurl.com/74pp5fj3

June 12, 2023

Ansys: It Will Take a Village to Solve Multiphysics

https://tinyurl.com/4hdnmvuj

July 5, 2023

CEMWorks: Driving Smart City, Transportation and Communications Innovations Through Electromagnetic Simulation

https://tinyurl.com/bdfa3udk

August 1, 2023

Atomera: Boosting Semiconductor Performance With Quantum-Engineered Materials

https://tinyurl.com/yckwwevt

Oct 9 2023

Real Intent: Growing Into a Management Role: Perspectives From Real Intent CEO Prakash Narain

https://tinyurl.com/3as8vmnm

November 27, 2023

D2S: CEO Aki Fujimura: Curvy Design’s Time Has Come

http://tinyurl.com/5h73ysun

February 5, 2024

Sigasi: Getting it Right the First Time With Sigasi

http://tinyurl.com/yppbjc7z

February 20, 2024

IC Manage: Improving Chip Design and Verification Efficiency with IC Manage

https://tinyurl.com/3vssvjrp

April 15, 2024

About the ESD Alliance

The ESD Alliance, a SEMI Technology Community, has other programs, initiatives and activities for our members driven by engaged volunteers that bring value to our entire industry:

  • Coordinating and amplifying the collective and regional voices of our industry.
  • Continually promoting the value our industry delivers to the global semiconductor and electronics industry.
  • Addressing and defending threats and reducing risks to our industry.
  • Achieving efficiencies for our industry.
  • Marketing the attractiveness of the design ecosystem as an ideal industry for pursuing a career.
  • Enabling networking, sharing and collaboration across our industry.

Engage with the ESD Alliance

www.esd-alliance.org

ESD Alliance Bridging the Frontier blog

Twitter: @ESDAlliance

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Real Intent’s Prakash Narain on Growing into Management Role

 
May 23rd, 2024 by Bob Smith, Executive Director

Prakash Narain, a founder of Real Intent who serves as its president and CEO, grew his skillset from EDA tool developer to senior executive. In our recent conversation, he describes how his thirst to build a company led to the founding of Real Intent 25 years ago. He also offers advice on how to move into management or entrepreneurism and we conclude our talk with his opinion of recent industry trends.

Smith: How did your career journey get you into the business world and on to becoming the leader of Real Intent?

Narain: My background is in engineering; I received my Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. I first worked in EDA tool development at IBM EDA, CAD flow development at AMD, then moved on to semiconductor design at Sun Microsystems.

I always had a thirst to build a company to solve problems and improve the status quo. Over time, I decided it was important to address the verification challenges that our industry faced. That led to the founding of Real Intent 25 years ago, back in 1998.

Initially our target technology was in formal verification; however, we were way ahead of our time, as there was not even an assertion standard available.

HSWe successfully worked through the System-Verilog standardization process – yet in the end, we recognized that there was a bigger need for a higher capacity, higher performance verification solution. So, we pivoted and invented an approach that we term functional static sign-off.

My background when we first founded Real Intent was all based in engineering and I didn’t have much management experience. Building a successful company requires a more diverse set of skills. I had to develop these along the way by learning how to manage people and products, as well as administration, business management, marketing, and sales.

Real Intent is profitable and doing very well today. We have a strong, expanding product portfolio, a collaborative organization, and an engaged customer base.

Smith: How do you perceive leadership?

Narain: Leadership to me is about how you get things done – how you facilitate change. Significant achievements require a group effort. As a leader, you must motivate people and create an environment where large groups of people can work cooperatively and excel.

That environment needs to be weaved together in a way that enables everyone to grow within their domain of competency, so that as a group the team can accomplish something significant.

LogoThere are leaders who may look to control and leave their imprint on everything. However, when you hire very good people and want them to make significant contributions, you must be able to delegate to them – and accept that you will have near-term dependencies on them.

This leadership style of empowering people has worked very well for me. Leadership and entrepreneurship require creativity to imagine new ways to create value for a product and its applications, as well as in setting goals and communicating in a way that inspires people.

Smith: How has your engineering background helped inform your leadership style?

Narain: Electronic design automation is a very engineering heavy industry. Having the relevant engineering domain knowledge and expertise is essential to operating as a leader in comprehending the technology challenges you face and making the right judgment calls.

This engineering domain expertise also allows you to effectively communicate with the people you lead as well as promote the value of your company and its products to your customers and the industry.

Smith: What advice would you give to someone wanting to grow into a management role or to budding entrepreneurs?

Narain: My advice to engineers wanting to transition to become budding entrepreneurs is: Do not take entrepreneurship lightly – it’s hard. Be aware that it requires a lot of personal grit to come out on the other side to run a successful, profitable company.

ImageFor engineers wanting to grow into a management role, I would simplify management into three dimensions – people managers, process managers, and engineering managers.

Everyone will have a different balance of these three attributes, and my advice would be to know your own strengths and work to develop your management style in all three dimensions.

Smith: What’s on your mind these days? What trends are you seeing?

Narain: Across the tech industry, we see this massive trend toward the development and deployment of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The important question is – can we leverage AI techniques to advance the engineering domains in which we operate.

At Real intent, we are focused on enabling shift left with static sign-off. I also see tremendous opportunity in the static sign-off domain to continue to advance and expand through new applications for enabling shift left in verification for various design flow aspects. Shift left can be defined as the earliest possible efficient verification of a design step.

About Prakash Narain

Dr. Prakash Narain is President and CEO of Real Intent. His career spans IBM, AMD and Sun where he had hands on experience with all aspects of IC design, CAD tools design and methodology. He was the project leader for test and verification for UltraSPARC III at Sun Microsystems. He was an architect of the Mercury Design System at AMD. He has architected and developed CAD tools for test and verification for IBM EDA. Dr. Narain has a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana where his thesis focus was on algorithms for high level testing and verification.

Ansys’ John Lee on Cultivating Trust within his Team

 
May 9th, 2024 by Bob Smith, Executive Director

Note: Bob Smith’s interview below with John Lee of Ansys originally appeared March 4, 2024 on the SEMI website blog.

Cultivating trust and keeping his team agile and innovative as they engage with technology partners and customers is a core focus of John Lee, General Manager and Vice President of the Ansys Electronics, Semiconductors, and Optics Business Unit.

I recently spoke with Lee, a serial entrepreneur and a member of the ESD Alliance Governing Council, about his career and move from technical roles into management and how he motivates members of his team.

Read the rest of Ansys’ John Lee on Cultivating Trust within his Team

CEO Executive Outlook Last Call, Spotlight on ESD Alliance Volunteers

 
May 2nd, 2024 by Paul Cohen

Scott Seiden

Kudos to Scott Sieden, Keysight’s Director Strategic Marketing, Keysight EDA Portfolio, and a tireless ESD Alliance volunteer, for his efforts to ensure a lively CEO Executive Outlook next Thursday, May 9.

A highlight of the evening are two RISC-V influencers who will discuss the RISC-V movement and its effect on the semiconductor design ecosystem –– Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, and Jack Kang, Senior Vice President of Business Development at SiFive.

Bob Smith, the ESD Alliance’s Executive Director, will moderate a panel of executives reviewing the state of the electronic system design industry now and in the future:

  • Dave Kelf, CEO of Breker Verification Systems
  • Aki Fujimura, CEO from D2S and a member of the ESD Alliance Governing Council
  • Niels Fache, Keysight’s VP and GM, Design and Simulation, and a member of the ESD Alliance Governing Council
  • John Kibarian, CEO of PDF Solutions and a member of the ESD Alliance Governing Council
  • Prakash Narain, CEO at Real Intent and a member of the ESD Alliance Governing Council

Read the rest of CEO Executive Outlook Last Call, Spotlight on ESD Alliance Volunteers

Curvy Design’s Time Has Come Says D2S CEO Aki Fujimura

 
April 23rd, 2024 by Bob Smith, Executive Director

Aki Fujimura, CEO of D2S and a member of the ESD Alliance Governing Council, is an expert on curvilinear (aka curvy) chip design. He believes curvy chip design’s time has come and will ultimately replace the traditional Manhattan routing methods with their 90-degree-constrained turns. He recently discussed with me why curvy designs will lead to smaller, faster and more power efficient devices.

Smith: As the original creator of DEF/LEF as VP Engineering of Tangent in the late 1980s, you are very familiar with Manhattan routing methods. Tangent was first to commercialize area-based placement and routing with DEF, LEF, engineering change order (ECO), clock tree synthesis, scan insertion, timing-driven design in a then-solidifying synchronous design methodology. Tangent was acquired by Cadence in 1989 as a result. DEF/LEF are still the standard formats today for place and route. Isn’t the whole EDA infrastructure still pretty much making the Manhattan assumption?

Fujimura: A huge amount of innovation since then has improved considerably upon what we did back then. But you’re right that the basic approach to place and route is still making the Manhattan assumption with an alternating preferred direction (either horizontal or vertical) per layer. The Manhattan assumption was already there before Tangent came along. But prior to DEF/LEF, all interconnect was described as a path with (x,y) of each vertex. DEF/LEF halved the file sizes through the simple assumption that X or Y repeat because 99% of wires are alternatingly horizontal and vertical.

Read the rest of Curvy Design’s Time Has Come Says D2S CEO Aki Fujimura

Great Lineup of Speakers Highlights CEO Executive Outlook May 9 at Keysight

 
April 17th, 2024 by Bob Smith, Executive Director

Registration may still be open for the ESD Alliance CEO Executive Outlook co-hosted with Keysight Technologies Thursday, May 9, but I suggest you sign up now. With a great lineup of speakers and topical discussions, we’re expecting a crowd.

We have a slight change in speakers. Jack Kang, Senior Vice President of Sales and Business Development at SiFive, joins Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, to talk about the evolving RISC-V movement and its effect on the semiconductor design ecosystem.

Read the rest of Great Lineup of Speakers Highlights CEO Executive Outlook May 9 at Keysight

Electronic System Design Industry Logs $4.4 Billion in Revenue in Q4 2023

 
April 9th, 2024 by Paul Cohen

Kudos all around our industry as it continues to report strong revenue growth!

According to the Electronic Design Market Data (EDMD) report, the Electronic System Design (ESD) industry revenue increased 14% to $4,423 million in the fourth quarter of 2023 from the $3,879.9 million logged in the third quarter of 2023. The four-quarter moving average comparing the most recent four quarters to the prior four increased 14.1%.

Our industry’s hiring. Companies tracked employed 60,106 people globally in Q4 2023, an 8.9% jump over the Q4 2022 headcount of 55,192 and up 0.6% compared to Q3 2023.

Read the rest of Electronic System Design Industry Logs $4.4 Billion in Revenue in Q4 2023

Keysight to Co-Host ESD Alliance 2024 CEO Executive Outlook Featuring RISC-V Executives

 
March 28th, 2024 by Bob Smith, Executive Director

Registration is now open for our annual CEO Executive Outlook co-hosted with Keysight Technologies that will be held Thursday, May 9, in Santa Clara, Calif.

The formal program will begin with two high-profile executives –– Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, and Patrick Little, CEO of SiFive, a RISC-V IP provider. They will address the evolving RISC-V movement and its effect on the semiconductor design ecosystem.

Immediately following their talk will be a panel of noteworthy executives who will discuss the state of the electronic system design industry and the outlook for the future. I will moderate the panel that features:

  • Dave Kelf, CEO of Breker Verification Systems
  • Aki Fujimura, CEO from D2S and a member of the ESD Alliance Governing Council
  • Niels Fache, Keysight’s VP and GM, Design and Simulation, and a member of the ESD Alliance Governing Council
  • John Kibarian, CEO of PDF Solutions and a member of the ESD Alliance Governing Council
  • Prakash Narain, CEO at Real Intent and a member of the ESD Alliance Governing Council

The in-person event will be held at Keysight (address below) beginning at 5:30 p.m. P.D.T with networking, dinner and beverages. The program starts at 6:45 p.m. and is open to ESD Alliance and SEMI members at a cost of $25. Pricing for non-members is $50 per person. Click here to register.

Keysight

5301 Stevens Creek Blvd., Building 5

Santa Clara

About the ESD Alliance

For EDACafe readers unfamiliar with the ESD Alliance, a SEMI Technology Community, we represent members of the ecosystem that provides goods and services spanning the conceptualization, design, verification, manufacturing and deployment of semiconductor-based electronic systems. Our industry is essential to the global semiconductor industry as the driving force that enables new electronic systems to be conceived, designed and brought to market.

We focus on initiatives and activities that bring value to our entire industry:

  • Coordinating and amplifying the collective and regional voices of our industry.
  • Continually promoting the value our industry delivers to the global semiconductor and electronics industry.
  • Addressing and defending threats and reducing risks to our industry.
  • Achieving efficiencies for our industry.
  • Marketing the attractiveness of the design ecosystem as an ideal industry for pursuing a career.
  • Enabling networking, sharing and collaboration across our industry.

Contact me at bsmith@semi.org  or Paul Cohen at pcohen@semi.org if you have questions or would like information about joining us.

Engage with the ESD Alliance

www.esd-alliance.org

ESD Alliance Bridging the Frontier blog

Twitter: @ESDAlliance

LinkedIn

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How One Company Tackled Unlicensed Use of its Software

 
March 19th, 2024 by Bob Smith, Executive Director

Note: The ESD Alliance, a SEMI Technology Community, spearheaded an industry joint development effort to develop a server certification protocol to close a loophole often exploited in software piracy schemes. Cadence Design Systems, Siemens EDA and Synopsys were members of the industry-standard SEMI Server Certification Protocol (SSCP) joint development committee. One of many SSCP supporters is Ted Miracco, a founder and executive vice president of AWR Corporation, now part of Cadence, and someone at the forefront of combatting software piracy. My blog post below, originally appearing on Semiconductor Engineering, is based on an interview I did recently with Ted.

Piracy is a growing concern for all software providers, especially those of us with complex and specialized software, such as chip design automation software that is expensive to develop and maintain.

That’s why the Electronic System Design Alliance (ESD Alliance), a SEMI Technology Community, spearheaded an industry joint development effort to develop a server certification protocol that would close a loophole often exploited in software piracy schemes. Cadence Design Systems, Siemens EDA and Synopsys were members of the industry-standard SEMI Server Certification Protocol (SSCP) joint development committee. SSCP is applicable to protecting any high-value software product(s) that use license management systems to control access to and use of software licenses. It is now available for licensing from SEMI.

Read the rest of How One Company Tackled Unlicensed Use of its Software

Now Open: Nominations for Phil Kaufman Award and Hall of Fame

 
March 5th, 2024 by Paul Cohen

Nominations are being accepted now through June 30 for the 2024 Phil Kaufman Award and the Phil Kaufman Hall of Fame, sponsored by the ESD Alliance, a SEMI Technology Community, and the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA). Nomination forms are available for download on the SEMI website.

The awards recognize individuals whose contributions made an impact within electronic system design in business, industry direction, promotion, technology and engineering, educational or mentoring.

Established in 1994, the Phil Kaufman Award honors electronic design automation industry pioneer Phil Kaufman, who turned innovative technologies such as silicon compilation and emulation into businesses that have benefited electronic designers.  Last year’s recipient was Dr. Lawrence T. Pileggi, Coraluppi Head and Tanoto Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

The Phil Kaufman Hall of Fame posthumously recognizes individuals who made significant and noteworthy contributions through creativity, entrepreneurism and innovation to the electronic system design industry and were not recipients of the Phil Kaufman Award.

Read the rest of Now Open: Nominations for Phil Kaufman Award and Hall of Fame




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