A designer often asks himself, Where can he best make the differentiation? In hardware or software?
Today you almost certainly outsource activities that are not critical to differentiation, and think of doing things yourself that can provide differentiation. The cost and time-to-market advantages of outsourcing are tremendous and growing, while enabling a company to rapidly and competitively evolve in its niche expertise area.
When the designer talks about a differentiating architecture, what exactly does he mean in terms of hardware and software? For a typical OEM today, software as a part of architecture is an afterthought. Hardware designers design the architecture and almost all decision making is done by them. For instance, designers don’t see the processor and the operating system at the same time. After the hardware product design is completed, software developers are told to write software that the hardware needs.
EMERGING ECOSYSTEM This is going to change. Because designers now think that differentiation can better come through software than hardware. It is in this context that processor makers now find that they can sell the same processors to multiple tier-one OEMs without any objection being raised from any customer. Chip companies that have traditionally designed chip hardware are now moving toward providing a much larger piece of solution that would include on board hardware reference designs, standard building block software, and application software stacks like standard IP stacks or DCP stacks either together or in conjunction with an ecosystem vendor. It may not be an exaggeration to say that the challenges the chip designer faces in putting together the various components on a chip is emerging to be as formidable if not more than designing the chip.
IP is an important part of the ecosystem. It can come from any source, such as, say core provider, semiconductor company, tool provider, OEM, open source community, or OS provider. A leading OS provider may take the responsibility of ensuring that its IP is integrated, tested, and maintained, and supports its IP till the building of solution, with software typically the last part fitted into the solution before the OEM starts writing the application software. But such support may not be forthcoming from some IP providers. Typically a solution might use 80 percent or more of components sourced from third-party, leaving the designer about 20 percent components to provide differentiation. It is not uncommon that toward the end of solution building, in the process of providing differentiation through software some bugs are found in IP. Experience has shown that the IP provider may no more be in existence leaving the designer stranded. The IP industry has always been highly volatile and the volatility is increasing. Such situations are better taken care of if software is part of the design from the beginning when IPs are being sourced and assembled.
INTRA-INDUSTRY COLLABORATION With software emerging as the strategic ground of design differentiation, one trend likely to emerge is intra-industry collaboration. Different verticals evolved during different times to cater to specific designer needs. In the early 1970s designers designed their own test equipment. In the 1980s EDA evolved and the designer depended both upon his own abilities and EDA tools for successful designs. In the 1990s IPs started trickling into designs and for successful designs the designer had to depend not only on his abilities and EDA tools but also on the abilities of IP providers. In 2000s IPs have flooded designs and the SoC designer who typically sources IPs from a number of IP providers has to depend upon the abilities of a team of people to come out with a successful design. This means that a large number of suppliers in the design ecosystem have to work seamlessly right from the start to the end of the design to provide a successful solution to the end user. As software is an important element in this ecosystem, working on software from the beginning makes far greater sense than plugging it towards the end.
