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August 2021

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July 2020

5 Reasons Why NOT To Hire a Tier 1 Semiconductor Supplier for Your Custom Silicon Project.

It’s quite common for system companies to want to work with brand names whenever they start playing with the idea of a custom silicon program. Like the old adage says: “no one ever got fired for choosing IBM”. And it’s not a bad deal for some system companies to go work with brand name semiconductor suppliers. Large semiconductor suppliers...

June 2020

How to manage trans national, multi company, and cross functional teams

All system custom silicon projects where the silicon is not designed and manufactured in-house require at least two companies to directly interface with each other: the system company and the silicon supplier company. Each one of these two companies has other companies that interact with them. Typically, the system company works with a contract manufacturer, and that contract manufacturer interacts...

The Spartan flow: when losing is NOT an option.

Every so often a custom silicon socket comes up at a system company that you simply cannot afford to lose. These are the types of custom silicon sockets that last for generations of a product, in huge and predictable volumes, and for whatever reason they may become available. It’s not easy to predict when a strategic change by a...

How to pitch new silicon to a system company: knowing the timing and the process are key ingredients for success.

Since I’ve been on both sides of the table when it comes to buying/prospecting or selling/pitching silicon components, I want to put down some thoughts about how things work out timing and process wise such that the buyer is most receptive to the pitch.   Some key steps are: Understand the product release date. There are many companies that release their products...

System custom silicon process

System Custom Silicon Development

In this video, I explain the system custom silicon development process focusing only on the schedule interactions and phases of the process. In the highly competitive electronics market, top electronics companies choose to develop custom silicon internally and with supplier partnerships to obtain substantial benefits in performance, size, IP protection and cost reduction. System custom silicon is developed in parallel...

February 2020

Trust, but verify. How to catch peanut butter engineering before it spreads into your system — Part 2: Verification.

Verification is a field that has emerged as its own discipline, no longer being relegated to an activity led by the design team, and to which time is allocated as long as it doesn’t get in the way of designing. Chip companies that want to have predictable product release cycles have realized that it is a false choice to...