Archive for October, 2011

An analogy of “three big dogs hovering over a bowl of dog food” has been used to explain the business challenges of the EDA industry. This oft-cited quote is attributed to Cadence’s founder and first CEO, Mr. Joe Costello, debating how EDA had become a fixed-pie industry on a panel at DAC in 1995. For history buffs, amusingly, the response from Synopsys’ CEO – then and now – Dr. Aart de Geus, was “If you think of yourself as a dog, you only deserve dog food!” Surely, the quote was highlighted out of context; but it leaves one with the nagging question of how does an industry go about growing the pie rather than redistributing the fixed pie? Of course, there are many well-proven business strategies for doing so, and standards is certainly one of them.

An ecosystem built around technologies that are based on support for industry standards has many advantages. Even while pointing to Apple’s success through a strategy of controlling the entire ecosystem, one must realize that all those consumer devices connect through well-known standards such as Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) and USB, and the iPhone connects through different phone carriers. It will also be interesting to watch whether Android can topple Apple again like the IBM PC compatibles did decades ago.

The point is that standards – specifically, standards-based interoperability – enable two or more industries/industry segments to interact with each other to provide a desired and complete solution, thereby growing and benefiting each of the industries.

However, the mere creation or existence of a standard does not by itself grow the market. In fact, until it is widely adopted, it is difficult to say whether there is actually a standard or not. To produce an actual standard, adoption of the standard needs to be shepherded through product introductions, education, books, conferences, white papers, and so on. It’s also necessary to nurture new business models, forge partnerships, and continue on an evolutionary roadmap for a period of time before it becomes apparent that the use of certain technology has become a standard. The length of this time varies by industry and degree of difficulty to implement the standard, and in the EDA industry it is usually at least 2 years.

A good example of an EDA standard that grew the pie is SystemVerilog. Based on contributed technologies, it took (arguably) about 3 years to complete and have serious adoption begin. At present, there are at least 125 products, solutions, and training offerings that make up the SystemVerilog-enabled market.

Feeding more dogs with a bigger pie makes everyone – suppliers, customers, and investors – happier.

After a long summer break and time for a blogging platform upgrade, The Standards Game is back in action. My blog may have had a quiet period, but the world of standards kept on turning. It’s hard to believe that Fall is here already and so many interesting events took place during The Standards Game’s vacation.

Here are a few highlights of what happened over the past few months.

Accellera and OSCI announced their plans to merge into a single organization. The new organization will combine the experience and resources of both bodies to broaden its benefit to the electronics industry. System-level design – and the standards that support it – is an integral part of System-on-Chip (SoC) design. A single standards-setting organization that addresses the interoperability requirements from the industry.

There was significant movement in the low-power standards arena. Si2 announced that they contributed relevant parts of the CPF 2.0 specification to the IEEE P1801 (UPF) working group, and  Cadence is also participating in the working group. “Convergence” is a term we’ve talked about for at least 4 years. I hope it will finally become a reality.

The Design Automation Standards Committee (DASC) held its annual election for officers. Each office is a two-year team, with two officers being elected each year. This year the positions of Chair and Vice-Chair were up for election. Stan Krolikowski was re-elected as DASC chair, and Yatin Trivedi was elected as Vice-Chair, Kathy Werner remains as Secretary and Victor Berman remains as Treasurer. (BTW, renewing and new members of DASC should pay their annuals dues before the end of 2011. At 40 $USD, it’s a bargain.)

Planning for DVCon 2012, which will include the latest in Accellera/OSCI standards, technical papers, industry-leader panels, and methodology tutorials, is well underway. Paper and panel selections are being finalized by the Techical Program Committee. Aart de Geus, CEO of Synopsys, will be the keynote speaker. (I’m the General Chair.)

Finally, the annual IEEE election was held and I was voted in as the 2012 President-Elect of the IEEE Standards Association. I will be the IEEE-SA President in 2013-14, at which time I will also have a seat on the Board of the IEEE itself. It’s going to be a great experience, I’m truly honored, and I’ll work hard to keep and increase the effectiveness of IEEE standards.

As always, I welcome your observations, ideas, and questions as we continue to participate in the standards game.