Detailed Program Information for Monday, April 19, 2004*

8:00 - 8:15

Farhad Mafie, President and CEO of Savant Company Inc.

Farhad Mafie, President and CEO of Savant Company Inc., has over 20 years of experience in electronic and computer businesses and more than 10 years of university-level teaching experience.  Farhad is the former Vice President of Business Development and Technical Sales Engineering at Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc.  He has also worked at Lucent Technologies, Toshiba Information Systems, Unisys, and MSI Data in strategic marketing, and project engineering capacities for system and chip design.  Farhad has a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronic Engineering and Computer Design from California State University, Fullerton. His combined business and academic experience has given Farhad a unique ability to effectively communicate complex new technologies to business professionals at all levels, as well as the ability to foresee emerging leading-edge technologies.  An avid bicyclist, Farhad is also an author and a translator, and he writes articles for a variety of journals and Web-based magazines on world affairs. 

ASIC/SoC/Foundry for 90nm and Sub-90nm

Ronnie V. Vasishta,  Vice President of Technology Marketing & CoreWare

"ASIC/SoC 90nm and Beyond"

The challenges associated with complex SoC design seem to increase with every new generation of technology. As these challenges mount, what we are really faced with is the cost of managing or harnessing complexity. History has shown that when faced with a challenge, a new approach to addressing the challenge is developed. These new approaches, often called “disruptive technologies,” once again enable a wider user base. As we move into the era of multi-mega gate SoC design, it is obvious that the current alternatives of FPGAs and ASSPs, while valuable in their own spaces, do not provide the disruption required to bring complex SoC design to the masses at 130nm and 90nm.  This is where Platform ASICs come in.  They are gaining acceptance and soon will be moving into the mainstream.  But just what is a Platform ASIC and how does it fit into the landscape of custom logic design?

Ronnie Vasishta is Vice President of Technology Marketing and CoreWare® Engineering for LSI Logic Corporation.  He oversees the companywide strategic technology direction and the definition and development of LSI Logic’s technology products, including silicon technologies, intellectual property cores, design tools and methodologies, advanced packaging, embedded memory, and I/Os.  In addition, he has responsibility for direct marketing support for customers, sales, vertical market groups, and design centers.  Vasishta’s responsibilities also include the marketing and engineering of LSI Logic’s CoreWare® Engineering program, which includes CoreWare® methodology, development, and field support engineering, as well as interfaces with third-party IP providers.   

Walter Ng, Senior Director, Design Solutions, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing

"Partnering with Foundries to Bring Your SoC Design to Market"

Design complexity, implementation cost, and time to fully functional silicon are primary concerns in bringing today's SoC designs to market. Foundries must provide support to their customers' design teams through silicon-proven libraries and intellectual property, proven design flows, and extensive and accurate device models to achieve high probability of first pass design success, which addresses both cost and time. Partnering with your foundry of choice becomes even more critical given the design challenges of 90 nanometer and beyond. Understanding where the foundry industry is heading and how to maximize your foundry relationships figure prominently in achieving system requirements.

Walter Ng is responsible for driving and managing Chartered's business and marketing relationships with third-party IP and EDA partners.  Mr. Ng has been in the electronic design and EDA industry for more than 13 years, holding a variety of business development, sales, and marketing positions at Sequence Design and Cadence. He also held various senior design and test engineering positions in Raytheon's  Equipment Development Labs in the area of satellite communications. Mr. Ng holds a BSEE from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an MBA from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Bradley Howe joined Altera in 2002 and serves as Vice President of IC Design, responsible for the development of Altera's silicon products. With 20 years of industry experience, he has held a number of senior engineering and managerial positions that include Vice President of Engineering at C-Cube Microsystems, Clearwater Networks, and SandCraft.  He holds a BS and an MS in Computer and Electrical Engineering from Boston University.

SoC Design Challenges 

Surinder Rai,

"SoC Tradeoffs in a High-Voltage Isolation Environment:  Based on Experiences with Communication ICs such as Analog Modems"

This presentation will discuss how system-level partitioning decisions with respect to silicon partitioning the SoC were made in real-life cases with respect to communication ICs such as analog modems.  The objective is an attempt to evolve a set of criteria for each SoC situation by establishing the basic fact that the optimum solution is very much dependent on the overall business and technology constraints. This study will tradeoff certain criteria of business success:  R&D investment, revenue, margin dollars, and time-to-market alongside key technology tradeoffs:  silicon partitioning, silicon costs, overall solution costs, power dissipation, and performance. It will attempt to derive the decisions as to how the analog modem product line took advantage of the process technology roadmap. The reason for selecting the analog modem business in this case is the familiarity of the author with this business during the last decade, in addition to the fact that analog modems are typical of some of the very issues that SoC-based product lines encounter in the real world.  This presentation objective is to establish a simple matrix/criteria which could be easily applied to any other SoC product line.

Surinder Singh Rai is Director of the Computing Connectivity Division of Agere Systems.  Agere is a premier provider of advanced integrated circuit solutions for wireless data, high-density storage, and multiservice networking applications. In this capacity since 2001, Surinder has responsibility for the wired product line, which includes analog modems, 1394-based standard products, and USB-based standard products. These responsibilities include the overall product portfolio and strategy direction, P&L results, and customer relationships. Before assuming his current position, Surinder was Marketing Director for Agere’s Analog Modem product line for four years, with overall responsibility for product strategy, product design-in, and customer support.  Under Surinder’s guidance, Agere’s Analog Modem business doubled in a four-year period. Prior to joining Agere, Surinder was a marketing manager for AT&T Microelectronics, responsible for the PC Graphics product line, with an emphasis on RAMDACs for PCs and workstations. Surinder holds a patent titled “CMOS Output Buffer Providing High Drive Current” (#4638187).  Surinder received an MBA from the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota; a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the State University of New York at Stony Brook; and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from BITS in Pilani, India.

Gordon Mortensen, Engineering Manager - Advanced Technology, Portable Power Group, National Semiconductor

"Low Power SoC Design Using Voltage Islands and Adaptive Voltage Scaling"

The application of Adaptive Voltage Scaling (AVS) can greatly reduce power consumption and improve energy efficiency in SoC designs. This discussion/paper will present simulated and measured power savings with AVS and investigate voltage island partitioning options for low power SoC design.

Gordon Mortensen is an Engineering Manager in the Advanced Technology section of the Portable Power Group at National Semiconductor. He has 21 years of experience in the semiconductor industry in engineering management, as a design engineer, and as a product engineer. Gordon's embedded systems experience includes 4-bit, 8-bit and 16-bit microcontroller products, x86 platform chipsets, and PowerWise™ Portable Power Management products.

Michael Ou, Principal Design Engineer, Palmchip Corporation

"Integration of Third-Party Intellectual Property into an SoC Design"

This presentation discusses the challenges of integration of third-party IP into an SoC design from both an IP-user and an IP-supplier perspective.  The presentation focuses on issues encountered during the integration process, including connecting the IP to the system, verification, and synthesis and suggests strategies to deal with these issues for both IP users and IP suppliers.

Michael Ou works as a Principal Design Engineer at Palmchip Corporation, where he is responsible for IP Development and Platform Technology.  Prior to Palmchip, he worked as an ASIC design engineer at Quantum, Adaptec, and Amdahl Corporation.  He received his BSEE from Princeton University and MSEE from Stanford University.

Keynote

Dr. Raman Menon Unnikrishnan is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. He is active in teaching and research in the areas of Control Systems, Power Electronics, and Signal Processing and is an author of numerous research papers and presentations in these areas. He has been a consultant to several industries and governmental agencies and has been involved in technical and professional education for industries. He is active nationally in the field of Engineering Education and Engineering Accreditation. Prior to joining Cal State Fullerton, Dr. Unnikrishnan was on the faculty of the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, where he also served as Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research for the College of Engineering from 1989 to 1991 and as the Head of the Electrical Engineering Department from 1991 to 2001. He received his BS degree from the University of Kerala, India, his MS from South Dakota State University, and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Missouri, all in electrical engineering.  Dr. Unnikrishnan is a member of Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi, ASEE, and a Senior Member of IEEE.

Configurable CPUs and DSPs for SoC Platform Design

David Fritz, Vice President of Marketing for SoC, ARC International

"ARC’s turnkey embedded solutions for SoC Design: processor core, real-time operating system, development tools, and peripheral hardware and software IP"

ARC’s solutions accelerate development and optimize results minimize risk for customers developing a wide range next-generation wireless, networking, industrial control, storage and consumer electronics products. ARC introduced the industry’s first user-customizable 32-bit RISC/DSP processor core and the industry's first USB Hi-Speed On-The-Go IP. ARC’s turnkey embedded solutions, combining the processor core with a real-time operating system, development tools and peripheral hardware and software IP, enable developers to optimize the design and performance of their applications. By providing designers with a single source for all major embedded silicon and software IP building blocks, ARC dramatically reduces their number of suppliers, thereby reducing cost, reducing risk and reducing time-to-market.

Mr. Fritz holds degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from Manchester College and began his career at Texas Instruments and DSC Communications. He was the founder and president of Production Languages Corporation, a pioneer in configurable processor technology, where he was awarded a US patent covering fundamental processes related to configurable processors. Production Languages Corporation was subsequently acquired by ZiLOG in 1999, and Mr. Fritz became vice president of ZiLOG’s Advanced Cores R & D as well as vice president of ZiLOG’s Development Systems Group. He currently serves as vice President of Technical Marketing for ARC International.

Steve Leibson, Technology Evangelist, Tensilica, Inc.

"Designing with Configurable Processors Instead of RTL"

General-purpose microprocessor cores are the universal building blocks for SoC designs, but they aren’t fast enough to solve many application problems. SoC designers often resort to designing and verifying hardware accelerators to bridge the performance gap, with a substantial loss in application flexibility. Rather than designing RTL hardware blocks for performance-intensive tasks, it’s much faster and more efficient to tailor application-specific processors to perform on-chip tasks. These processors deliver the required hardware-level performance with microprocessor flexibility. This session discusses how application-specific processors provide a superior alternative to hard-wired RTL for performance-intensive SOC tasks. It also discusses how multiple processors can effectively be used in SOC design to meet schedule, performance, and cost goals.

Steven Leibson is the Technology Evangelist for Tensilica, Inc. He has formerly served as the Vice President of Content and Editor in Chief of the Microprocessor Report, Editor in Chief of EDN Magazine, and Founding Editor in Chief of Embedded Developers Journal magazine. He has written hundreds of articles that have appeared in several electronics industry trade magazines, and he has won many industry awards for his writing. While at MDR, Leibson developed and presented many microprocessor seminars and he organized and served as MC for the Microprocessor and Embedded Processor Forums. He holds a BSEE Cum Laude from Case Western Reserve University and worked as a design engineer and engineering manager for leading-edge system-design companies including Hewlett-Packard and Cadnetix before becoming a journalist.

Ralph Weir, Director of Technical Marketing, Elixent, Inc.

"Meeting the SoC needs of demanding next-generation consumer applications" 

The consumer electronics industry is facing conflicting demands for increased performance and functionality, increased battery life and shorter product life cycles.  In this presentation Elixent will describe these challenges in a world dominated by billion-dollar wafer fab dynamics.  We will then show how Reconfigurable Algorithm Processing  (RAP) technology can turn these dynamics to the designer's advantage, aiding silicon designers in developing SoCs that meet these tough requirements and that are not only viable, but profitable.  RAP is a programmable platform allows silicon-efficient implementation of algorithms that are best implemented in hardware - for example, multimedia & SDR processing.  It does this in a programmable and very low power manner, unlike traditional DSPs or RISCs - which are typically too slow and carry significant overhead.  It does this without committing the algorithm before tape-out, as is the case with traditional configurable CPUs.  Instead, it is a complementary technology to configurable CPUs, allowing them to remain relevant in the 90nm age and beyond. 

Dr.

"Reconfigurable Digital Signal Processors (RDSPs)"

The future growth and development of SoC technologies relies on the longer life cycle of the new chips in wireless communication and media processing.  The current approach of integrating ASIC solutions is not economically attractive for the new generation of SoC chips, because of the NRE expenses (mask, engineering, validation, etc.) and the shorter life cycle of the product.  Therefore, reprogrammable technologies such as reconfigurable highly parallel DSPs are the most cost effective approach that meets the real-time performance and power requirements of the next generation SoCs and can migrate across product generations meeting new standards and in-field upgrades.

Dr. Nader Bagherzadeh has been involved in research and development in the areas of computer architecture, reconfigurable computing, VLSI chip design, and computer graphics. For almost ten years ago, he was the first researcher working on the VLSI design of a Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) processor.   Since then, he has been working on multithreaded superscalars and their application to signal processing and general purpose computing.  His current project at UC, Irvine is concerned with the design of coarse grain reconfigurable pixel processors for video applications.  The proposed architecture, called MorphoSys, is versatile enough to be used for digital signal processing tasks such as the ones encountered in wireless communications and sonar processing.  DARPA and NSF fund the MorphoSys project (total support $1.5 million).  Dr. Bagherzadeh was the Chair of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at University of California, Irvine.  Before joining UC, Irvine, from 1979 to 1984, he was a member of the technical staff (MTS) at AT&T Bell Laboratories, developing the hardware and software components of the next-generation digital switching systems (#5 ESS).  Dr. Bagherzadeh holds a Ph.D. in computer engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.  As a Professor, he has published more than a hundred articles in peer-reviewed journals and conference papers in areas such as advanced computer architecture, system software techniques, and high performance algorithms.  He has trained hundreds of students who have assumed key positions in software and computer systems design companies in the past twelve years.  He has been a Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-PI on more than $2.5 million worth of research grants for developing next-generation computer systems for solving computationally intensive applications related to signal and image processing.

Panel: Configurable CPUs/DSPs for SoC Platform Design

Ron Wilson, Editor, EE Times.

Moderator

Ron Wilson is Semiconductor Editor at EE Times. Wilson has covered semiconductors, chip design and related issues for EE Times for 13 years, with occasional brief diversions such as editing and publishing ISD magazine. In prior lives he pursued careers in marketing management, technical training and design engineering, obviously without catching any of them. He has a list of publications and speaking engagements too insignificant to mention.

Chinh Le, CEO and CTO of LeWiz Communications Inc.

Panelist

LeWiz Communications Inc. develops SoC chips to solve I/O performance and security bottlenecks in computing subsystems.  Mr. Le is a leading expert in embedded and network processors.  Prior to LeWiz Communications, Mr. Le was the Director of Engineering for a Silicon Valley startup company where he successfully led multiple teams to develop complex, deep submicron network processors and classification engines.  Mr. Le also served as Operations Manager for Motorola Semiconductor and was one of the original architects of the embedded PowerPC™ processor chips for Motorola.  Mr. Le currently holds nine patents.  He also authored several papers on embedded processor architecture and applications.  He has MSEE and BSEE degrees from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Panel:  Configurable CPUs/DSPs for SoC Platform Design

Moderator: Ron Wilson, Editor, EE Times.

Panelists:

1) David Fritz, Vice President of Marketing for SoC, ARC International

2) Steve Leibson, Technology Evangelist, Tensilica

3) Dr. Nader Bagherzadeh, Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UCI

4) Ralph Weir, Director of Technical Marketing, Elixent

5) Chinh Le, CEO and CTO, LeWiz Communications Inc.

 Exhibition Room Open

Detailed Program Information for Tuesday, April 20, 2004*

7:45 - 8:00

Jauher Zaidi, CEO of Palmchip Corporation and Member, Savant Board of Advisors

"TBD"

Jauher Zaidi is Chairman & CEO of Palmchip Corporation.  Jauher has over twenty years of experience in system design and integration. Before founding Palmchip in 1996, he was involved in system-on-chip (SoC) integration at Quantum Corporation. Jauher received his BSEE and MSEE degrees from Pacific States University in Los Angeles, California. He has also participated in many SoC panels and is a recognized expert in the area of SoC development. 

SoC Design Using Programmable ICs & Structured ASIC

Richard Terrill, Senior Manager, Higher Volume Solutions, Xilinx Corporation

"SoC Challenges and Opportunities for Programmable Devices at 90nm and Below"

Xilinx has spearheaded adoption of 90nm and 300mm manufacturing technologies, leading to some of the greatest cost reductions in recent semiconductor history. Xilinx delivered the world's first 90nm FPGA in March 2003, which combines 90nm/300mm's low costs with the re-programmability and system-on-chip features of platform FPGAs. Xilinx's Richard Terrill will describe some of the challenges, trends, and opportunities for design engineers as they consider FPGAs for applications previously reserved for ASICs and FPGAs. He will include technical descriptions of FPGAs used in high-volume SoC applications. He will also provide insight into what lies ahead for Xilinx and the industry as platform FPGAs add even more capabilities to solve system level challenges.

Richard Terrill, Senior Manager of High Volume Products Marketing, has more than 15 years’ experience in the semiconductor and EDA industries, with responsibilities ranging from technology research to strategic marketing and business development. Prior to Xilinx, Mr. Terrill held positions at Lightspeed Semiconductor, Cadence Design Systems, and Altera Corporation. He was a founder of RAPID, the IP Business Advocacy organization, and a corporate representative to the VSI Alliance. Mr. Terrill earned a B.S. degree in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and served as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve for six years.

Phillip LoPresti, Associate Vice President and General Manager, Custom LSI Solutions, NEC Electronics America, Inc.

"How to Achieve ROI in 90nm ASIC Development"

Current conditions in the semiconductor market present ASIC designers with a seemingly impossible task:  develop a high-performance
ASIC with minimal NRE investment and very short turn-around time.  Truly high-performance ASICs are certainly possible when implemented in 90nm process technologies, but 90nm ASIC designs can be so complex that bringing a product to market quickly enough to generate the huge ROI required to justify the product's development is increasingly difficult. However, the introduction of structured ASICs has provided designers with
an ASIC design platform that meets the disparate goals of high performance ASIC design with low-cost and short turn-around.  NEC Electronics America's Phill LoPresti will explain how structured ASICs, like those in NEC Electronics' ISSP90 family, are accelerating the ROI for 90nm development.

Phillip LoPresti is associate vice president and general manager of the Custom LSI Solutions strategic business unit at NEC Electronics America. In this role, he is responsible for expanding the company’s ASIC technology business in North America.  Mr. LoPresti joined NEC Electronics America in 1984 as an engineer in the company’s design center and later was promoted to manager.  Subsequently he was general manager and then business operations manager of the system LSI organization, where he was responsible for all system LSI products and sales.  Earlier in his career, Mr. LoPresti was employed by RCA Automated Systems and also was an adjunct professor of electronics at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.  He holds both bachelor of science and master of science degrees in electrical engineering from Boston University.

Shyam Chandra, Marketing Manager, Lattice Semiconductor Corp. 

"SoC Power Supply Management Using an Integrated Programmable Mixed Signal Device"

Satisfying the power supply tracking and sequencing requirements of all multi-voltage devices on a circuit board coupled with supervising the health of all supplies, called Power Supply Management, is both parametrically demanding and logically challenging. This paper breaks down the challenges and identifies the requirements of a circuit board’s power supply management section and shows how the revolutionary integrated mixed signal device with design software provides unprecedented convenience to the design engineers.

Shyam Chandra is the Marketing Manager for the in-system programmable mixed signal products at Lattice Semiconductor Corp. Prior to joining Lattice, he worked for Vantis and AMD in sales and applications and was a telecom design engineer with Indian Telephone Industries. Shyam received his Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Ganesh Narayanaswamy, Product Marketing Manager, Altera Corporation

"Maximizing the Possible Benefits of Structured ASIC Technology"

The rising costs of semiconductor manufacturing, coupled with growing design complexities resulting from increasing integration, have combined in the last few years to dramatically raise both the risks and the costs involved in designing and developing application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).  Today, cost of ownership for the development of a single ASIC device can be as high as $20 million before the first samples are delivered.  As a result of these economic and technical challenges, a number of companies have developed a “structured ASIC” manufacturing approach designed to reduce the costs, risks, and development time involved in producing custom ICs.  This paper will discuss the factors that have led to the rise of structured ASICs and that are increasingly limiting the cost-effectiveness of the traditional ASIC approach.  It will also describe what is needed to make a structured ASIC design succeed and the methodologies and approaches necessary to maximize the benefits promised by this emerging technology.

Ganesh Narayanaswamy joined Altera in 2002 as a Product Marketing Manager responsible for the HardCopy structured ASICs product line. Prior to Altera, Ganesh held several engineering and managerial positions at National Semiconductor, Insilicon and Sanmar Electronics. Ganesh holds an MS from Mississippi State University and an MBA from Santa Clara University.

System-on-Chip Platform Design

Jim Venable, Senior Vice President, Palmchip Corporation

"Implementing a System-on-Chip Platform Methodology in the Design Flow Requires a New Way of Thinking"

This presentation outlines the definition of an SoC platform and how implementing an SoC platform methodology within the design flow requires the engineer to rethink his/her approach to chip design by considering the entire process, from concept through the front-end process to the back-end process and eventually to manufacturing. The presentation will also discuss how this new approach to SoC design dramatically increases the chance of first-silicon success, reduces the time needed to get a chip to market, and reduces design cost to increase profitability.

Jim Venable is a Senior Vice President at Palmchip with overall responsibility for marketing and sales. He is a 20-year veteran of the semiconductor industry and has served at senior management levels with global leaders in semiconductor and microelectronics products. Jim holds a BS in electrical engineering from Texas Tech University.

Lakshmi Mandyam, PowerQUICC III Product Manager

"Implementing a System-on-Chip Platform for High-Performance Communications Processors"

"Communications processors" are defined as highly integrated processors (computing devices executing a set of user-programmable instructions) specifically optimized for communications and networking applications (voice/data/video; data/control/management planes). This presentation will focus on communications processors that are based on System-on-Chip (SoC) platforms, which make it faster and easier to integrate various processing blocks, industry-standard peripherals, interfaces, buses and protocol support to address specific customer and market needs. A case in point is Motorola's 32-bit, RISC-based PowerQUICC III communications processor family. The PowerQUICC III SoC architecture features an array of industry standards and Motorola technologies, including a high-performance Book E PowerPC e500 core, 256KB on-chip L2 cache, a RISC-based Communications Processor Module (CPM) for protocol acceleration, RapidIO interconnect technology, dual Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, and support for DDR SDRAM and PCI/PCI-X. PowerQUICC processors feature a four-port, packet-based crossbar switch fabric that enables high-bandwidth on-chip communications, execution of multiple simultaneous data transactions and peer-to-peer transactions with CPU intervention. PowerQUICC III processors are also available with an integrated security engine that supports DES, 3DES, MD-5, SHA-1, AES, and ARC-4 encryption algorithms, as well as a Public Key accelerator and on-chip Random Number Generator.  PowerQUICC III processors are manufactured on Motorola's 130nm processor technology, and 90nm versions are planned for the future. The PowerQUICC III family is supported by a comprehensive ecosystem of development tools (reference and evaluation boards, application development systems, software tools, RTOSs, etc.) from Motorola and third-party vendors.

Lakshmi Mandyam is a PowerQUICC III Product Manager at Motorola's Networking and Computing Systems Group in Austin, Texas. She is responsible for all facets of product management and product marketing for the next-generation PowerQUICC III communications processor with RapidIO technology. During her 10-year tenure at Motorola, Lakshmi has served as an SRAM product engineer, worked in PowerPC processor marketing roles, and was instrumental in developing Motorola's security processor strategy and product implementation. She holds a B.S.E.E. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Shri Sundaram,

"Redefining SoC:  From System-  to Solution-on-Chip"

System-on-Chip (SoC) has always been equated to a piece of silicon. However, delivering a working piece of silicon is just half the job. Successfully porting or writing software such as device drivers and RTOSs to the new piece of silicon is a long, arduous journey. The market is unforgiving to those who cannot deliver a complete solution on time. From a market standpoint, shrinking product life cycles, and a highly demanding customer constitute two, ever-present challenges.  Players such as Toshiba have seized the opportunities and have responded to the market challenges with their ability to deliver in record time -- not just silicon -- but a complete package comprising both software and hardware. To put that in perspective, it is practically possible to deliver a silicon solution from a block diagram in 6 months -- i.e., a working piece of silicon plus RTOS, IP drivers, middleware and chip diagnostics ported to the platform. This session traces and analyzes how the SoC has come to stand for "Solution-on-Chip" (i.e., a complete silicon solution rather than just a piece of silicon) and how teams at Toshiba are able deliver a complete solution in record time. The session ends with ideas for the audience on how this approach can make business sense to sponsors and managers of SoC projects in their respective organizations.
 

Shri Sundaram is System Engineering Manager for the System LSI Group of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC). He has 10 years of experience in various engineering and marketing roles in the semiconductor, telecom, and IT industries. He holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from Thunderbird (American Graduate School of International Management) and a BSEE degree from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (India).

Balraj (Raj) Singh, Senior Marketing Manager, LSI Logic CoreWare Technology Group

"Accelerating Custom SoC Design Using RapidChip Platform ASIC with System CoreWare IP"

Over a decade ago, LSI Logic’s pioneering efforts in IP reuse revolutionized ASIC design by establishing a proven CoreWare IP portfolio.  CoreWare set the standard in the industry with its rich set of proven, easy-to-integrate, and performance-leading cores.  LSI Logic recently introduced System CoreWare, which extend its IP platform capabilities.  By raising the level of abstraction from component IP to pre-defined, pre-verified systems that are modular and easily extendable, System CoreWare IP significantly lowers the risk and design time associated with developing complex custom SoCs. When used in conjunction with RapidChip silicon platform and the associated RapidWorx design system, this provides a totally new and innovative way to manage complexity and meet the shortened time-to-market goals for developing custom ICs.

Balraj (Raj) Singh is a Senior Marketing Manager in LSI Logic’s CoreWare Technology Group. His responsibilities include strategic marketing of CoreWare IP and product definition, including definition of processor systems and platforms. Prior to his current role, Raj has worked in various engineering and management roles at LSI Logic, Siemens Microelectronics, and Hewlett-Packard.  While at Siemens, Raj played a key role in micro-architecture development and VLSI design of the first TriCore MCU/DSP. At Hewlett-Packard, Raj was responsible for micro-architecture performance analysis for the PA-RISC and IA-64 based processors.  Raj holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California at Berkeley and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.  He has multiple patents and papers in the microprocessor field.

Keynote

Derek Lidow, CEO and President, iSuppli

"New Realities Mandate Fundamental Changes in Competitive Strategies"

During the past several years of downturn and weak recovery, the foundations of the semiconductor business have been dramatically altered, which in turn will cause changes in the nature of the industry's unit growth and price dynamics, requiring very different strategies for success on the part of chip suppliers. The rules of thumb developed by successful semiconductor executives over the past 30 years don't apply anymore--and can't yield the same kind of success they did previously.

Derek founded iSuppli to provide the visibility, resources, and control to improve the electronics industry value chain. iSuppli accomplishes this by gathering and disseminating unique value chain data and information and by working with its clients to use the information to make better and faster business decisions.

Prior to founding iSuppli, Derek was CEO of International Rectifier, a leading power semiconductor company. Derek earned a BSEE degree Summa Cum Laude from Princeton and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford as a Hertz Foundation Fellow.

JeanClaude Toma, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, Xiran

"SoC-Enabled Parallel Processing Platform for IP Storage and Content Delivery Applications"

Xiran, a Division of SimpleTech Inc., is a leader in Content Delivery and IP Storage acceleration cards technology.  Our core competency as a system solution technology provider is based on our DirectPath Engine (DPE), a symmetric multiprocessing system on a chip (SoC) showcasing the highest level of integration applied to configurable and programmable processors and dedicated logic solving systems I/O bottlenecks.  As the name implies, we create a DirectPath between network and storage nodes of the general purpose server or storage hosts and offer up to 10x performance enhancement to upgraded systems with our accelerator cards. We achieve this performance by increasing the serverwidth of server or networked storage systems, where Xiran's SoC-based accelerator cards offer efficient delivery of content and data between network and storage nodes of these systems. In summary, we will discuss how we are able to solve complex problems of separating control plane and data plane traffic of systems leveraging from our SoC centric technology.

A 20-year high technology veteran, JeanClaude Toma has held several executive-level positions as President and C.O.O. of NKK Micro Devices, Senior Director at Toshiba America, as well as several Business Development, Marketing and System Engineering roles in Unisys, American Arium, and other companies. Mr. Toma has an MSEE and an MBA from Cal Poly Pomona and a BSEE from UC Irvine.

EDA Tools and Methodologies for Nanometer SoCs

Steve Carlson, Director, Cadence Synthesis Team

"Front-end Design for Nanometer SoCs" 

Abstract: The focus of this talk is to highlight the need for next generation front-end EDA solutions for designing nanometer SoCs.  Over the course of the last decade, significant improvements in the back-end tools, combined with a lack of innovation in the front-end technology, has resulted in the front-end design becoming the weakest link in SoC designs.  This paper presents the idea behind the globally-based optimization algorithms necessary for making design closure easier and provides case studies to support the suggested rules for creating designs with superior Quality-of-Silicon (QoS)

Steve is a Director on the Cadence Synthesis team.  In that role he is focused on marketing the solution for the best Quality-of-Silicon (chip speed, area, power, test measured after wires).  Carlson reports to Chi-Ping Hsu, Corporate VP for New Synthesis at Cadence.  Steve joined Cadence in April in 2003 via the Get2Chip acquisition, where he was the VP of Marketing.  Prior to Get2Chip, Steve was the CEO of Tharas Systems, a hardware acceleration company.  Steve has also held various management positions at Escalade, LSI Logic, United Technologies and Synopsys.  At Synopsys, Steve was a part of the original Design Compiler technical team responsible for timing analysis and optimization.  Steve was the author of the industry’s first book on high-level design titled, Introduction to HDL-based Design Using VHDL.  Steve has BSEE and BSCS and an MSEE all from the University of Colorado.

Robert Jones, Director, Strategic Marketing, Magma's Silicon Correlation Division

"Power Modeling Challenges for 90nm"

Design teams are adopting 90nm process technologies to build System-on-Chip designs under fiercely competitive market pressures against the constraints of power, packaging, timing, and die size. These teams are building new power-aware methodologies around a growing set of new design styles and EDA tools. However, fundamental power modeling issues and requirements must be understood before these advanced methodologies can be incorporated effectively into production SoC design flows. This session presents a background on these power modeling challenges, an overview of the low-power, multi-threshold and multi-voltage design techniques new to most designers, followed by a discussion of associated requirements necessary to be successful in complex 90nm SoC design.

Robert Jones is director of strategic marketing for Magma’s Silicon Correlation Division, formerly Silicon Metrics. With over 19 years in the semiconductor and EDA industries, he drives the division’s corporate planning, strategic business development and corporate marketing. Prior to joining Silicon Metrics, he held various technical and management roles at Synopsys, Avanti, and AMD.

Dave Apte, System Level Design Specialist
 Summit Design

"EDA Tools for SoC High-Level Design and Verification"

Today, SoC presents a new design methodology in which competitive advantage is moved into IP and SW integration, rather than pure HW design.  The challenges depend upon an ability to compose a set of pre-defined HW blocks--including one (or several) processors, bus, memory, peripherals and SW--into an optimized architecture that can perform complex tasks.  With the new ESL tools, users can model complex systems with abstract data objects and communication interfaces--and quickly analyze functional and architecture characteristics--long before HW and SW implementation start. The ability to "floor plan" SoC architecture is highly important in the effort to optimize architecture resources that directly impact cost and power. Detecting high level communication faults (HW/HW and HW/SW) at such an early stage significantly reduces the RTL verification cycle, as well as the overall product design cycle.

Dave Apte has 12 years of experience in EDA tool development and technical marketing. He held senior technical positions at Omniview, Viewlogic and Innoveda, and is currently product manager for Summit Design's System Architect. Dave has managed the development and marketing of system-level design tools based on HDLs and SystemC. He has previous experience in the development of semiconductor device and process simulators and design-capture tools. He holds bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and a masters from the University of Florida.

Pedro Santos, Product Manager, Synchronicity

"Raising SoC Design Productivity Through Systems That Support Effective Reuse"

Semiconductor manufacturing advances are enabling feature-rich systems on one chip, but with traditional design practices engineering costs are prohibitive, so design organizations are scrambling to do all they can to improve productivity and speed time to market.  Though it’s taken almost a decade to fulfill its early promise, massive design reuse, from both internal and external IP sources, is proving to be the single most effective way to raise productivity--but only for those who put proper processes and supporting infrastructure in place.  We are going to examine the challenges to reuse in SoC design, the requirements for systems to support it, and solutions available, including advanced hierarchical management solutions for block-based design.

Pedro Santos is Product Manager for the Synchronicity Publisher Suite, the industry’s most widely adopted solution for design reuse, IP distribution, and support. Before joining Synchronicity, Pedro held a similar position at Genuity, where he was central in making Genuity's e-Business Collaboration product line a success.  Pedro has also implemented various engineering design management systems at high tech companies.  Pedro has an engineering degree from the University of Massachusetts.

Panel:  EDA Tools for 90nm and  Post-90nm

Dave Bursky, Editor-at-Large, Electronic Design Magazine

Moderator

Dave Bursky, the Editor-at-Large for Electronic Design magazine, joined Electronic Design in 1973, and has worked in various editorial positions, amassing more than 30 years of experience covering technology and product developments in the electronics industry.  Promoted to Editor-in-Chief in the fall of 1999 and to Editor-at-Large in early 2003, he has been responsible for defining the direction and content of Electronic Design. In addition to the editorial management responsibility, he has covered all aspects of Digital Semiconductor Technology, from processes to architectural definition, and from testing to circuit applications, for the magazine. He travels extensively around the U.S. as well as to Asia and Europe to interview company executives, and to attend trade shows and symposiums.  Additionally, Dave is one of several Electronic Design editors awarded the Jesse H. Neal award for Editorial Excellence. In 1988 he was described by an article in the San Jose Mercury News newspaper as one of the 100 most influential people in Silicon Valley. He has also taught digital logic technology at the former RCA Institute in New York City, and has been a guest lecturer at the Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, Calif.. Additionally, he has served on the program committees of numerous IEEE and commercial conferences, and has also moderated and organized technical presentation sessions at IEEE and commercial conferences. He has also authored six books on topics ranging from personal computers to semiconductor memories.  Prior to joining Electronic Design in 1973, he worked as a civilian electronics engineer at Fort Monmouth, N.J. on tactical computer systems and secure communication systems. Dave holds both Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Electrical Engineering from the City College of the City University of New York (1971 and 1973, respectively).  Dave lives in Silicon Valley and is married and has two children. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, stamp collecting, electronics (home-brew computing), and traveling.  

Dr. Martine Simard-Normandin, President and CEO, MuAnalysis

Panelist

Dr. Simard-Normandin has over 26 years' experience in microelectronics, specializing in device physics, process modeling, microcontamination engineering, and electrical and material characterization. During that time she has authored or co-authored over 50 scientific journal and conference papers on microanalysis. Previously, Dr. Simard-Normandin was Manager of the Materials and Device Analysis Department in STMicroelectronic’s Centre for Microanalysis, and Manager of Materials and Structures Analysis at Nortel Networks. She founded MuAnalysis in 2002. Dr. Simard-Normandin holds a B.Sc. in physics from the Université de Montréal and an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Toronto.  She was awarded an Industrial Postdoctoral Fellowship from the American Physical Society, focusing on microelectronics.

Dr. Mahmoud Fawzy Wagdy, Professor of Electrical Engineering, California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. from Cairo University in 1973 and 1977 respectively, and the Ph.D. from Kansas State University in 1983, all in electrical engineering. He worked in Cairo in the Electronic Industries R&D Center (1973-76) and the Electronics Factory, Arab Organization for Industrialization (1977-79). He spent 4 months in 1977/78 at Thomson-CSF in France. Prior to joining CSULB in 1989, he worked in Boston (Northeastern University & University of Massachusetts at Lowell) as Assistant Professor.  Dr. Wagdy’s present teaching interests include undergraduate and graduate courses in microelectronics, mixed-signal integrated circuit design, analog signal processing, design of electronic systems, etc. Dr. Wagdy’s recent research includes mixed-signal IC design and switched-current analog signal processing. Previous research includes A/D converter diagnosis, dithering, and switched-capacitor techniques. Old research includes computer-based measurements and active-R filters. He has held summer positions at Analog Devices Semiconductors (Wilmington, MA) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, CA). He was sometimes involved in consulting. He has worked on many funded research projects including a college-level NSF project, where he produced multimedia modules on electronics manufacturing and interference signal reduction. He is the founder and director of the electronics and instrumentation research laboratory in the EE Department. Dr. Wagdy has published about 43 papers in journals and international conferences and his research has been cited internationally over 130 times. He is the recipient of the Andrew Chi Best Paper Award for his 1989 paper on ADC dithering in the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement (I&M).  Dr. Wagdy served as a Guest Editor for the special issue of the IEEE Transactions on I&M in 1994. He was the Technical Program Chairman of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (IMTC/1993). He also served as Chairman of the IEEE Los Angeles joint chapter on I&M and Industrial Electronics (1992-96). He was a member of many committees at the department, college, and university levels. He is also the preparer of the ABET-2000 Self Study for the EE Department.

John A. Ford, Vice President of Marketing, Virtual Silicon

Panelist

John A. Ford is Vice President of Marketing for Virtual Silicon, a ventured back start-up Semiconductor Intellectual Property (IP) company located in Sunnyvale, CA. John brings to Virtual Silicon an extensive background in engineering and marketing of ASIC and system-on-chip (SoC) semiconductors. He previously held the position of Director of ASIC/SoC Marketing at Atmel.  During his 11 years at Atmel, John started the ASIC product line, and led the strategic product development, business development and acquisition efforts for ASIC/SoC product division. Prior to joining Atmel, John held management positions in both marketing and engineering at General Electric and Honeywell.   John holds a BS in engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an MBA from the University of Colorado.

Moderator: Dave Bursky, Editor-at-Large, Electronic Design Magazine

Panelists:

1) Steve Carlson, Director, Cadence Synthesis Team

2) Robert Jones, Director, Strategic Marketing, Silicon Correlation Division, Magma

3) John A. Ford, Vice President of Marketing, Virtual Silicon

4) Dr. Wagdy, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, CSU Long Beach

5) Dr. Martine Simard-Normandin, President and CEO, MuAnalysis

Closing Remarks -- Farhad Mafie, Savant Company Inc.

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