John East from Actel talks to Electronics Weekly in series of exclusive interviews where CEOs give their impressions of the last 12 months and point to the challenges and opportunities which lie ahead for the industry.
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What’s the New Normal? Whatever it is, it’s good for FPGAs.
Coming out of the downturn, we emerge more cautious about forecasting for the future. There is a strict non-negotiable business requirement to provide profitable growth (not just top line growth).
This means that purchases of capital equipment take longer, hiring of personnel for new projects is rare and planning your next product is a gamble. As a result, the supply chain has less visibility that ever before. Why? Because no one knows what the “new normal” is.
Let me explain.
The old normal emerged 10 years ago as we developed the “backbone” of the industry: fibre, basestations, etc, primarily driven by performance and Moore’s law.
Shrinking process geometries was king as long as we packed the silicon full of transistors, with zero regard for cost and power.
The new normal is this world we find ourselves in, with the consumer at its epicenter. With them in mind, system designers have turned their focus on handheld, portable devices to make work, life and play a lot easier.
Mobile phones, cameras, medical devices, point of sale terminals, industrial controls - these are today’s cool, new gadgets.
Always on, these devices need to be cost attractive to consumers, batteries need to last forever, and it better be small enough to fit in your hand.
So, move over, performance: cost, power and space now rule.
Compared to life 10 years ago, what we can do today with these handheld devices is incredible. And to think – this is just the beginning! But here’s the dilemma: driven by consumer’s whims on features and specifications, their wants and needs are much more difficult to predict.
Therefore, lifecycles are heart-stoppingly short. So how in the world do you plan for that? Hence, the hesitation to forecast.
For the world of programmable logic providers, this is a perfect storm. System designers are now chasing the new normal by leveraging FPGAs because it allows them to use the same design platform across many variations of a design.
They also have the ability to swiftly react to market demands by adding new features or update specs via in system programming tweaks (in house or in field) with little impact on cost and time to market.
Reluctant to fix a design long term for fear of quick obsolescence (blink and it’s old), designers of today’s cool, handheld products are moving away from ASICS and hedging their bets with flash-based FPGAs for its low power, cost, small form factor, IP security and inherent design flexibility.
Welcome the new normal.
Author is John East, CEO of Actel