Re: [SI-LIST] : Some Semiconductors are Unnecessarily Fast

D. C. Sessions (dc.sessions@vlsi.com)
Tue, 13 Jul 1999 09:10:41 -0700

Roy Leventhal wrote:
>
> Joe,
>
> Somebody else will always benefit from a first developer's effort that advances
> the state of the art. It's the nature of the game. I, personally, have never
> seen long term big winners among companies that have tried to control the
> technology. The winners seem to be nimble, fast adapters of the best that is out
> there.
>
> I wouldn't give away my secrets., they'll leak away soon enough. By then, I
> wan't to be on to the next innovation. Not possible if I'm fixing dumb problems.

Perhaps you misunderstood. The issue is that adding slew-controlled drivers
to the driver library is expensive. Si companies at present aren't doing it
because there's no perceived demand, so the only way to get the slew-controlled
drivers is to commission their design. For the first OEM (company A) to do
this it's a hit to both the budget and the schedule, which has to be traded off
against doing more SI work in-house.

OTOH Company B, who book their order six weeks later (as the cells make pre-Si
qual) now has gained six weeks of schedule disadvantage relative to their
competitor A, and can send the NRE that they didn't have to plonk down to
their stockholders.

IOW it's the implementation, not the state of the art _per_se_, that costs
without necessarily providing competitive benefit (or even negative
benefit.)

> jjcahill@us.ibm.com on 07/12/99 10:42:13 PM
>
> Please respond to si-list@silab.eng.sun.com
>
> Sent by: jjcahill@us.ibm.com
>
> To: si-list@silab.eng.sun.com
> cc: (Roy Leventhal/MW/US/3Com)
> Subject: Re: [SI-LIST] : Some Semiconductors are Unnecessarily Fast
>
> As both a signal integrity engineer and a driver designer I can say that the
> problem Roy speaks of can be solved technically rather easily. However it
> involves a business tradeoff. Specify something 'odd' to your semiconductor
> partner, pay NRE to achieve your ideal edge rates, pay a higher parts cost for
> your 'special' part and then have your vendor sell your design to your
> competitors OR invest in comparitively cheaper SI tools and engineers. I think
> SI engineers will be gainfully employed for quite some time.
>
> Joe
>
> CEC Analysis and I/O Design
> Phone: 507.253.0762 Fax: 507.253.4966
> jjcahill@us.ibm.com
>
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-- 
D. C. Sessions
dc.sessions@vlsi.com


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