The status of the Electronic Platforms

Published:2011/10/20 1:02:00 Author:Li xiao na From:SeekIC

According to Ravi Subramanian, the CEO of Berkeley Design Automation (BDA), the war for control of electronic platforms has begun. All platforms are trying to reduce the electronics products quickly, thus the fast-growing new middle classes of Asia can be attracted by them.

It is a tremendous period of innovation for BDA despite the economic uncertainty. Subramanian pay much attention to five components in an electronic platform, namely the apps processor; sensors and displays; power management; memory and connectivity. The cost of these five components must reduce, therefore, many companies have taken actions, for example, Panasonic want to reduce their TV BOM by 3x which requires a fundamental re-design.

In order to win the battle of electronic platform, the participator must control as many of the five components. This is a force towards a return to verticalisation of the electronics industry. For instance Apple, he says, has 1,000 IC designers. Subramanian also points out that the big companies are facing the age-old problem of competing with their customers. There are many examples to prove this fact, such as the Apple’s move away from Samsung to TSMC for foundry, Samsung-Apple IP wars over handset patents and the banning of the Galaxy Tab in Europe.

The emergence of BDA’s software attacks the worst phenomena of deep sub-micron, such as parasitics, device noise, mismatch between wafer layers and variability. Compare with its competitors, the BDA as many advantages, such as the non-linear approach, the stochastic approach to look at noise, the multi-rate techniques.

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