News Article
A call to end the design struggle
Designer’s creativity pivotal in turning around struggling semiconductor design
Handshake Solutions, a design methodology venture based in The Netherlands, has sounded a wake up call to the semiconductor industry to urgently redesign its EDA strategy in order to survive in today’s nanotechnology age. Current electronic design methodology and tools shackle the designer’s creativity with cumbersome block building and timing issues that often yield a ‘Duplo’ toddler building block type of result.
The only way forward to achieving breakthrough electronic design innovations is to prioritise the creative process once again and end the predominant influence of the production process.
According to the company, the semiconductor industry has gradually become deadlocked, which is hampering progress. For more than a decade, the progress in electronic design has been unable to match the innovation rate and capabilities of the process technology. An effect that is also known as the ’Design Productivity Gap’. To date, no one has managed to take the fundamental steps needed to solve this problem.
The semiconductor industry has excelled for years in production process control to optimize yield and minimise risk in order to survive in the highly dynamic and cyclical market. Unfortunately the same production process philosophy also became embedded in the design department, so there has been a tendency to lose track of the essence of creativity.
“Other industries have benefited from the production process control knowledge developed by the semiconductor industry, now it’s our turn to learn from those other industries’ design innovation,” says Wout Van Roost, CEO Handshake Solutions. “We must empower our electronics designers and unlock this huge pool of untapped creativity”.
Creativity has been the differentiating factor that has brought success in other industries such as fashion, real estate, automotive and consumer electronics. This has mainly been achieved by anticipating or listening to future customer’s requirements and wishes, then allowing creative people to translate these into imaginative concepts.
“Semiconductor manufacturers should comply with one single design rule,” says Wout. “Let the designers rule their creative process, instead of having EDA tools running the show.”
The only way forward to achieving breakthrough electronic design innovations is to prioritise the creative process once again and end the predominant influence of the production process.
According to the company, the semiconductor industry has gradually become deadlocked, which is hampering progress. For more than a decade, the progress in electronic design has been unable to match the innovation rate and capabilities of the process technology. An effect that is also known as the ’Design Productivity Gap’. To date, no one has managed to take the fundamental steps needed to solve this problem.
The semiconductor industry has excelled for years in production process control to optimize yield and minimise risk in order to survive in the highly dynamic and cyclical market. Unfortunately the same production process philosophy also became embedded in the design department, so there has been a tendency to lose track of the essence of creativity.
“Other industries have benefited from the production process control knowledge developed by the semiconductor industry, now it’s our turn to learn from those other industries’ design innovation,” says Wout Van Roost, CEO Handshake Solutions. “We must empower our electronics designers and unlock this huge pool of untapped creativity”.
Creativity has been the differentiating factor that has brought success in other industries such as fashion, real estate, automotive and consumer electronics. This has mainly been achieved by anticipating or listening to future customer’s requirements and wishes, then allowing creative people to translate these into imaginative concepts.
“Semiconductor manufacturers should comply with one single design rule,” says Wout. “Let the designers rule their creative process, instead of having EDA tools running the show.”
