In my last column, I wrote about the EDA and IP industries not doing a very good job of providing complete solutions. Instead, products only get the chip designer to about 80% of where they want to go. These "swiss cheese" solutions hold back the entire semiconductor industry from running at maximum efficiency.

Let me be the first to say that the reasons for so many incomplete products in the market place relate back to forces that have disaggregated the semiconductor industry over the last 25 years.

Each company in the value chain plays its respective part by passing requirements down the line to the next supplier in the chain. This looseness of connections between semiconductor companies and their suppliers (EDA and IP companies) is holding them back from achieving the next level of IP reuse and design efficiency.

There is a saying that "success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan." In this case, the opposite is probably closer to the truth.

There are myriad reasons for failures, but all successes have one thing in common. A close technical working relationship between customers and suppliers is the recipe for success in our industry. I believe it is imperative that semiconductor companies take a leading role in defining what the future looks like for their suppliers.

Too often we see EDA companies inventing tools and then trying to convince their customers of the value of using them. We see IP companies inventing IP they want semiconductor companies to use. This is like putting the cart before the horse. Design engineers at semiconductor companies need to take a more active role in driving their suppliers in the right direction.

On the EDA side, semiconductor companies need to invest more time and research in defining what the design methodologies of the future look like and relate that specification to their EDA suppliers for implementation.

On the IP side, we should take inspiration from how Intel has led the PCI Special Interest Group and USB Implementers Forum by working with a large group of hardware, software, EDA, and IP companies to define new standards from a complete ecosystem standpoint.

Working together, potential holes in the ecosystem are well-understood and steps are taken at the architectural level to fill them.

As a result, we have great products at good prices in the space managed by the PCI-SIG and USB-IF. Outside the PC space, we see Freescale Semiconductor driving next generation automotive networking through its contributions to the FlexRay Consortium.

In the future, we will see more and more of this supplier-vendor collaboration. Semiconductor companies possess the expertise and have an obligation to their shareholders to optimise their supply chain. In the end, this is how we will deliver complete products that achieve their objectives of high quality at the lowest possible cost.

Previous columns

Warren Savage On: Making the Case for Invented Here