A few weeks ago I went to the ARM TechCon3, formerly the ARM Developer Conference (Still can’t figure out why they changed the name, now it makes no sense). I went because I was getting a flood of requests for interviews. When I was plowing through the information, none of it really caught my attention, but the PR guy for Imagination Technologies was particularly persistent. When I asked for some details about what we might talk about, he directed me to a couple of web pages with typical marketing blather: lots of unsubstantiated hyperbole, or as the Bard put it “sound and fury signifying nothing.”
I decided to go to the conference armed with the marketing crap and start asking questions based on the material and see what would come out of it.
I was pleasantly surprised that Peter McGuinness of Imagination Technologies was actually able to answer my questions intelligently and convincingly. He was the only one I met who could. Well done, Peter. I actually learned something. Imagination Technologies supplies IP to large processor companies like TI and Freescale to help them eat away at market share from Nvidia in the handheld market. They seem to be doing well at it. Here’s the interview.
I’ve taken a few weeks to ponder what I learned in all the interviews I did at DAC and have put them into this final, pointed podcast on what we might see happen in the next 12 months. There are some very good things happening in EDA and some very bad things. Here’s hoping you’re on the right track.
THIS IS AN UNSPONSORED PODCAST FROM NEW TECH PRESS
When I started these interviews at DAC my first was with Rajeev Madhavan of Magma where we discussed where EDA has gone wrong, along with the perceived controversy over Magma’s finances. I wasn’t expecting to wrap up this series with Rajeev again until I listened to his keynote at the EE Times Virtual Conference on SoC design. In his address were two items that made my ears pick up: the fact that the cost of designing SoCs has gone beyond the potential for profit and that drastic changes have to be made in the way the industry does business. In our discussion, he flat out said that EDA tools need to give semiconductor companies the ability to reduce headcount, not just make engineering staff more efficient. Bold words and maybe a bold vision for EDA.
This is an unsponsored podcast from New Tech Press
After I finished meeting with EDA companies at DAC, I sat down with Gary Smith of GarySmithEDA to talk about how DAC went and where he saw the industry going. Gary has long been an advocate of Electronic System Level design methodology and has said it was the coming thing for many years. He still sees that to be true, but no sees it as crucial for the survival of the industry now. He expects customers will come back to DAC in larger numbers once the industry decides to focus on ESL and de-emphasizes RTL. He also warned that startups still focused on RTL tools may not survive long enough to make the next DAC. Here’s the interview.
Ghislain Kaiser, CEO of Docea Power was my last vendor interview at DAC and one of my favorites because, well, he’s a new face in EDA and he has such a great name. It’s nice to see someone other than the usual suspects.
Docea tools help designers explore low-power architecture, with a focus on hardware/software partitioning and “support of the modern and powerful power management techniques,” whatever that means. It’s a cool technology and addresses a significant issue in engineering efficiency for SoC design.
Unfortunately, Kaiser was not able to give me a hard, bottom line accounting of what the tool does for profitability. It’s still just about the engineer and not the bottom line. Here’s the interview.
This is an unsponsored podcast from New Tech Press
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