JB’s Circuit

Several Portland-based news and business publishers are following the Cadence proposed buyout of Mentor:

> Oregon’s Homegrown Technologies Lose Edge: Wilsonville-based Mentor Graphics Corp may become the next corporate headquarters to leave

Covered by long time Oregonian tech reporter Mike Rogoway, who also runs a great blog called “Silicon Forest”
> Portland Business Journal - more on this one soon

Lots going on at Globalpress. Great EDA and semiconductor discussions. But, alas, I have no time (or hardware) to do anything but short posts. Look for more later this week, once I return. You can track my micoblog on twitter, if you’re really bored.

From Min online:

Last week the B2B industry was shaken by the news that Reed Business Information was being put up for sale by parent company Reed Elsevier. Today, it was reported by the Times of London, that RBI might have a potential suitor: private equity firm Apax Partners. According to folio.com, a spokesperson for Apax’s New York office would not comment on this possible development.

Apax currently owns the B2B media company Incisive Media; in December, it acquired, in partnership wtih Guardian Media Corp., Emap’s B2B division. Last August Incisive purchased ALM Media for $630 million. (more)

Two more veteren EDA editors have been ushered out of the fold. My sympathies (or perhaps congratulations?) to Michael Santarini and EiC Maury Wright, formerly at EDN. Lou Covey’s “State of the Media” blog was the first to post this latest media layoff. Very discouraging. - JB

I hate lists! The reason is simple; Lists remind me of all those trite bullet points that I see at the beginning, middle and end of every single &%# PowerPoint presentation that I’ve ever had the misfortune to experience.

Still, there is no denying the popularity of lists on the web. So reluctantly, I’ll enter the fray with my first list on the 5 most under-rated technologies of the last year:

• Chip-package-board software, which promises to be a seamless and harmonious blending of both EDA and CAD tool markets. Not!
• MEMs, thanks to the incorporation of cost effective embedded processors (good call, Pallab)
• Advances in solar cell technologies, especially from recycled chip wafers.
• Wireless anything
• Finally, the most under-rated technology of all: pen and paper.

Caution: Nothing of real interest here. I just need a place to record the URL before I forget:

http://john.blyler.googlepages.com/home

Lost power today. Had to work the old fashioned way, with pen, paper and firelight. Such dedication! Hope the publisher is watching.

“The most striking trend is the strong growth in Chinese contributions to U.S. innovation. Since 2000, however, the contributions of Chinese scientists have leveled off, while Indian contributions showed a slight decline. This may be raising a red flag about America’s capability to innovate in the future.” - The Changing Face of American Innovation, Harvard Business School, by William R. Kerr.

This interview is well-worth reading, though I do wish the researcher would quit pitching for more research money. – JB

Past blogs on innovation issues:

> Are EDA Companies Adequately Supporting Chip Design Innovation?

> Technological Innovation Requires More than Just Money

BTW: Some of you have asked for my RSS feed. It’s listed on the right-hand side panel, as well as below:

feed://http//www.chipdesignmag.com/blyler/?feed=rss2

Editor’s Note: These continuing reports are from Jim Kobylecky – Chip Design’s Technology Editor - at the IMEC in Leuven, Belgium. – JB

Unless you’re going to begin that second career soon as an Alaskan bush pilot, you will probably find yourself becoming a 3D designer. Chip real estate isn’t getting any cheaper, and the decision to start building high-rises on your silicon Manhattan is inevitable. Some applications, such as memory are already there. Past a point, it will just make economic sense.

But “When” will that point be, and “How” it will come about are not easy questions. That was the consensus of a panel discussion at the ARRM2007 Press Preview, an intensive IMEC technology conference in Leuven, Belgium. Moderator Pol Marchal (see figure 1 below), a Senior Researcher at IMEC, poised why/when/how questions to Fred Roozeboom of NXP, Diederik Verkest of IMEC (see figure 2 below), Jochen Resinger of Infineon, and Erick Beyne of IMEC (see figure 3 below). While 3D designing in some categories is already taking place, they’re relatively obvious, almost homogeneous propositions. When it comes to stacking many different kinds of IP and deciding between many different ways to interconnect them, the situations get much more complex. Much too risky to try without really good, thorough exploration and verification tools. Unfortunately, it’s also too risky to develop such complex EDA tools until there are enough users willing to buy them. It will be 2D business as usual for the time being.

Yet the economic advantages will gradually grow, first for special applications, then for more and more uses until the question in ten years, according to one panelist, will change to “why use 2D?” Future historically, it seems that when there are enough potential or experimental users, the tools will appear, and when there are enough tools, enough users will appear.

Chicken? Egg? The answer may be incremental. Long before there is true 3D general purpose design, their will be “2.5D.” Maybe we’re already at 2.1D. Startups and graduates straight out of the universities are already experimenting and developing early, incomplete tool sets. And as they and their initial users collide, the databases and standards necessary to develop more advanced tools will form out of the debris. The question then is “how soon.” Will there be enough “Co-petition” as one IMEC foil put it for these initial developments to quickly take place? Or are we coming into a time of competition that will delay the future? Ten years from now, we’ll know the answer, and it will seem very obvious.

On the “Yeah, but what now?” front, I should mention there were also demonstrations of recent IMEC developments that are just short of going out to become someone’s new products. These included a wireless sleep apnea monitor that can be used for home pre-screening and a body heat powered wireless EEG prototype (see figure 4 below). Coming soon to a Borg near you.

Figure 1: Moderator Pol Marchal set the stage.

Figure 2: Fred Roozeboom and Diederik Verkest gave their perspectives.

Figure 3: Jochen Resinger and Erick Beyne added their views.

Figure 4: Sleep Apnea and Self-Powered Brain Monitors hit the keyboard.

Editor’s Note: The following reports are from Jim Kobylecky, our own Chip Design editor. – JB

With competitive pressures growing and R&D budgets shrinking, where is the future coming from? Where are the generations beyond the next generation of technology being actively and practically explored?

One hopeful answer is here in Leuven, Belgium . It’s a town that features a university nearly 600 years old and the scene of many intellectual conflicts and resolutions. It’s a locale steeped in the work and fun of learning (see figure 1). It’s also the center for IMEC, a highly successful consortium of technology companies and university academics, where the costs, risks and rewards of advanced research are shared.

Some forty editors and journalists from around the world came for the ARRM2007 Press Review, an advanced peek at the latest and greatest that will be shown to the larger world later this week.

The first day’s program kicked off with general presentations by several officers including its president, Gilbert Declerck, and Chief Operating Officer Luc Van den hove (see figure below)on the state of the consortium and on IMEC’s response to the changing semiconductor landscape. There were briefings on the latest program announcements and then Maarten Willems, the Emerging Business Strategy Director, drove us into the future with “The road to autonomous driving.

There were many program announcements, which I’ll try to get to later. But I think I most enjoyed the chance to look inside the workings of the consortium itself. It’s R&D with a big “R.” Its task is to work ahead of industrial needs by 3 to 10 years in microelectronics and many related fields. But it’s not just tasked with being a center of world wide excellence through its papers and patents, but to also serve the local area with spin offs, collaborations, training and educational interactions. Originally funded in 1984 largely by the Flanders state government of Belgium, it is now one of the largest independent R&D organizations in the world with a staff of 1550 and most of its funding coming from its industry partners.

IMEC works early. In its scope, industry competitors can still work together creatively and openly. The competitive edge each seeks will be honed later, after the real road blocks to development have been creatively solved.

There are many things I still don’t know, and probably can’t from my perspective – such as how the handoff happens from deep, individual research into the teams necessary for early development – but I liked what I saw so far. - Jim