EE Times Under the Hood - June 23, 2008 - (Page U1)

UTH0623_P1.qxd 6/13/08 6:08 PM Page 1 www.eetimes.com • www.techonline.com EDITORIAL Presented by: Powered by: Differentiation by design BY PATRICK MANNION CEO,Techinsights Paul Miller Vice President/Publisher, EE Times David Blaza Sr.Vice President, TechOnline Jennifer Markey Editor in Chief, TechOnline, and Editorial Director, Under the Hood Patrick Mannion Editor in Chief, EE Times Junko Yoshida Art Director Debee Rommel Assistant Art Director Lynda Conley Production Editor Dale Anderson Copy Editors Diana Scheben Jacqueline Damian Barbara Dugan MANUFACTURING Donna Ambrosino, Group publishing services manager, Electronics Group and Channel I recently blogged about the possibility that silicon is starting to become irrelevant and that real product differentiation comes through software. I touched a nerve with that one. My silicon funk was soon dispelled, however, by your considered and gentle guidance toward a more moderate, “It’s a combination of both” mentality. Thank you. software/hardware co-design approach is needed, as is more systems-level expertise. That expertise needs to be coupled with a good knowledge of user interface design and customer needs. If not, you may end up with a Sony Rolly on your plate (see page 18). The story doesn’t end there. At the recent International Electronics Forum in Dubai, Kees van der Klauw of Philips noted how the old fallback of advanced silicon processes requires more investment, has longer earn-back time frames and faces increasing commoditization at the necessary high volumes to achieve that earn-back. This conflicts with consumer-driven-device demands for differentiation at lower volumes and decreasing product life cycles. His solution: Include a “sea of gates” on applicationspecific SoCs that would let developers innovate on top of function-specific elements, and incorporate a software-reuse approach to reduce development and validation time. For more on his thoughts, see my differentiation blog. VaST’s Paczan and Roane also advocate the use of software virtualization. Getting accurate models and running tests before going to silicon are the best way to get an optimized system to market on time and on budget. Such a system will have software that fully exercises the capabilities of the underlying hardware without breaking its back, providing a better user experience. Please e-mail me your thoughts at pmannion@techinsights.com. Karla Kotlarz, Kim LaSusa EE Times advertising coordinators UBM LLC Scott Mozarsky, Chief Operating Officer David Wein, Chief Financial Officer Anne Marie Miller, Corporate Senior Vice President, Sales Marie Myers, Senior Vice President,Manufacturing Pat Nohilly, Senior Vice President, Strategic Developmentand Business Administration Alexandra Raine, Senior Vice President, Communications Copyright® 2008 All Rights Reserved, Printed in the USA, United Business Media LLC, 600 Community Drive, Manhasset, N.Y. 11030 TM But an overarching question remains: How do designers innovate and differentiate while facing increased competition, accelerating time-to-market, increasing functionality demands and ever-lower cost points? I got the experts together on the phone and asked them. David Carey, president and teardown analyst at TechInsights’ Portelligent, thinks “specialized silicon is a key enabler for product functionality.” Gregory Quirk product manager at TechOnline, sees hardware and advanced processes as key differentiators, especially when the goal is to achieve lower power. Michael Paczan, CTO at software virtualization tool provider VaST, sees hardware differentiation accelerating, as standard, general-purpose cores are increasingly coupled with accelerators or optimized designs. That said, he sees a lot of software, too, as these designs get more complex and more programmable. VaST marketing vice president Jeff Roane points to the dichotomy of fewer ASIC design starts but rising unit volumes. “[More] chips are going out the door, and the number of unique products is going up. So those chips, those unique designs, are being differentiated more and more through software.” The full discussion, via podcast, can be found online within this week’s blog, “How to differentiate,” at www.techonline.com. The consensus was that while the onus is increasingly falling on programmers to achieve differentiation, a June 23, 2008 | Electronic Engineering Times, TechOnline 1 http://www.eetimes.com http://www.techonline.com http://www.techonline.com http://www.techonline.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Under the Hood - June 23, 2008

Under the Hood - June 23, 2008 Extreme Design: SuitSat Pushes Desigers' Limits Evolution of the Smart Phone Mature Devices get Rolly Rocking GPS: Garmin Nuvi 750 vs. HP iPaq 310 Inside the Sony OLED TV Multizone Dgital Audio Flip Ultra Camcorder - An Ode to Clean Design Robot Guitar Tunes Itself E-book is a Sight for Sore Eyes Scientific Calculator Boils Down to Two ICs $100 BOM Eludes First OLPC Laptop 45 nm: What Intel Didn't Tell You Next Step in NAND Flash Evolution Surveillance on a Shoestring Hot 3G Phone Owes Debt to Analog SecurID Fob: Single-Chip Safety Net

Under the Hood - June 23, 2008

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