The OpenWave Forum takes on Behavioral Modeling

October 26, 2009

Sherry Hess is vice president of marketing at AWR, bringing with her more than 15 years of EDA experience in domestic and international sales, marketing, support, and managerial expertise. For the majority of her career Sherry served in various positions at Ansoft Corporation including director of European operations and later as vice president of marketing. Before joining Ansoft, Sherry spent two years with Intel Corporation, where she worked in the ASIC Group and developed relationships with companies such as Bell Northern Research and Northern Telecom. Sherry holds a BSEE and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. www.awrcorp.com.

To comment or ask Sherry a question, use the comment link at the bottom of the entry.

If you’ve been reading the MWJ website these past few weeks, you’ve no doubt noticed a lot of information on “behavioral modeling” coming into the public domain.  Just this past month, the MWJ website hosted interviews with NMDG’s Marc Vanden Bosch on S-functions and David Root of Agilent on X-parameters.

During IMS in Boston, AWR interviewed Marc of NMDG and also Johannes Benedikt of Mesuro (Cardiff model) on their behavioral modeling approaches.  You can view those here:

While the concept of “behavioral models” has been around for a while now, it seems that 2009/2010 will see its coming of age.  Just a week or so ago, Anritsu showcased its behavioral modeling approach with HFE Sagl’s Dr. Ferrero bringing all major T&M players into the realm of behavioral modeling.

Understanding the power of behavioral modeling and what it can do for the designer has inspired AWR and others in / around this space to cooperate in understanding how we can ensure that the deployment/ use of behavioral models is streamlined to most benefit the customer.  What came about was the notion of the OpenWave Forum (OWF).    www.openwaveforum.org

Members of this emerging forum include AWR, Anritsu, HFE, Mesuro, NMDG, Rohde & Schwarz and Tektronix, and we encourage and hope that many more will join us. AWR’s motivation for being a founding member of the OWF is, of course, our on-going strategy to make it as easy as possible for customers to focus on design productivity. It’s refreshing to see competitors recognizing the value of working together for the benefit of all our customers.

I remember an experience back in the days when I was in sales and launching the European division of another software company. I marched into BMW HQ in Germany in the mid 1990s, determined to sell them more than the two seats they were using at the time.  At the end of the day, the engineering manager imparted these words of wisdom to me: “Sherry, I need my EEs to be designing, not drawing and doing file translation. My EEs (who were one for every 10 MechEs) are too valuable to spend their time drawing.  Enable ready import of our existing CAD files and then we’ll have something to discuss.”

For me this was a “no brainer” moment.  Anyway, I have digressed a bit but I think the point is the same. Engineers should be engineering, not toiling away on unnecessary steps like drawing a box.  We (in the collective sense of engineering tools/vendors) should be focusing on providing and differentiating our own IP and not mucking about explaining/convincing users, for example, about the benefit of dxf vs. sat file formats.  Be competitive on the subjects/technologies that matter most to the engineering community—it’s about how the models are developed and how customers’ bottom line can be improved!

If your curious to learn more about this topic, you can visit the OWF website and/or by visiting any of the other members of the OWF websites.

 

 

Why Small Companies Win

September 29, 2009

Sherry Hess is vice president of marketing at AWR, bringing with her more than 15 years of EDA experience in domestic and international sales, marketing, support, and managerial expertise. For the majority of her career Sherry served in various positions at Ansoft Corporation including director of European operations and later as vice president of marketing. Before joining Ansoft, Sherry spent two years with Intel Corporation, where she worked in the ASIC Group and developed relationships with companies such as Bell Northern Research and Northern Telecom. Sherry holds a BSEE and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. www.awrcorp.com.

To comment or ask Sherry a question, use the comment link at the bottom of the entry.

Dane Collins, AWR’s CEO, recently sent me a link to a very interesting and timely article in the Harvard Business Journal entitled, 

" Why small companies will win in this economy.” 

 

Author Peter Bergman points out that in this economy, the gap of confidence between small companies and big ones is growing, and that it seems counter intuitive that smaller companies are winning big deals and gaining market share in a recession when the big guys seem unable to weather the storm. One reason he gives is that, while customers used to rely on the security big companies provided, the collapse of AIG, Lehman, Citibank, GM, Chrysler, etc. has resulted in the belief that it is risky to do business with big companies and the trust isn’t there anymore.

 

Bergman goes on to say that he's been hearing the same thing from many large clients across industries.  Here’s a replay of a passage I particularly like:

“People in senior positions don't trust the decisions being handed to them. And if you go one layer down, to middle managers, the distrust is palpable. I don't know a single person who works for a large company who feels confident they'll have a job in 6 months. Not one.

Now, imagine you're a client wanting to buy from one of these companies. You call up your client contact to talk about the sale. One of two things will happen:

1. You have a relationship with her and so you talk and get a sense of her insecurity, fear, and distrust.
2. You have no relationship with her because the company is so big and you talk to a different person each time you call.

Either way, you'll probably get the sense that your contact may not be there in the future to fulfill her commitments to you. And that won't make you comfortable committing long-term dollars (or any dollars) to the company.”

Says Bergman, “We trust people. And in big companies, it's hard to even find a person to trust as we scream "operator" into our telephones only to get transferred to another menu... That gives small companies a huge advantage.”  "Relying on real people in a company, people who will be there in the long term and not disappear in a layoff is a huge competitive advantage in the current economy.”

Customers are looking for “a CEO who picks up the phone when it rings…Small is the new big. Sustainable is the new growth. Trust is the new competitive advantage.”

 

OMG.  I’m loving this guy’s analysis!   Let’s take a closer look at his thought threads….

 

CEO on the first ring?

At AWR, you can call us and Dane our CEO will answer. Heck, he’s dialing the phone to find you and understand your business whether you are a professor at a university, a designer at a big aerospace company, or a colleague at a partnering firm.  And it’s just not about accessibility of the CEO but also that the CEO possesses the ability to understand the customer's problem.  When you talk to someone at your vendor, even the CEO, does he understand how you're using his product?  Does he understand the specific problem you're trying to solve? 

Dane and everyone at AWR are highly accessible and our culture encourages it 24/7. Our customers have grown to appreciate this and I think it is a big reason why AWR is so consistently rated tops in customer service. Never lose touch with your customer, those who use the tool and their perception of it.  Build trust with your customers at all levels of your business and together you’ll both win. 

 

Small is the new BIG?

Small means nimble, responsive, can do attitude, able to react more quickly. Small companies are not stifled by layers of bureaucracy.  Everyone pitches in to make sure the customer is happy and you never hear “oh, that’s not my job.”  Perhaps smaller is indeed better?  Smaller keeps us all a bit more humble and ever mindful of our reason for being – that’s you, our valued customer.

 

Sustainable is the new growth?

Our customers, especially in their success stories, consistently name the following as our competitive advantage:

• ease-of-use (faster to learn)
• integration with third party tools (far fewer hassles and many more choices)
• customer support (keeping you productive)

We don’t just sell you a product, we sell you improved productivity, faster time to market, more bang for the buck!   Too often than not, when you're dealing with a big company, they lose sight of what you do, become defocused on your needs or dare I say, view you as just a sideline revenue generating businessL 

 

Trust is the new competitive advantage?

In our line of business, we really believe we need to be in the trenches with you - helping you with your designs, improving your ability to get things done…not requiring you to reinvent the wheel.   Customers are interested in who is going to help them leverage the benefit of what they're buying over the life of the product, so consistently doing what you say you’re going to do, when you said you would do it and delivering value in each and every new release is critical.   This is what we have done, are doing and will continue to do and excel at to the benefit of the customer.

   

If “small is the new big,” it’s the silver lining in this cloudy economic environment.  At AWR, we are proud of our ‘smaller’ company size and our focus on providing quality products and excellent customer service.   And thanks to all of you - our customers out there - who have put that trust in us!

 

 

 

IPL & Interoperable PDK Libraries (iPDK) – Have you heard of them? Take the Survey, Win a FLIP video

 September 09, 2009

Sherry Hess is vice president of marketing at AWR, bringing with her more than 15 years of EDA experience in domestic and international sales, marketing, support, and managerial expertise. For the majority of her career Sherry served in various positions at Ansoft Corporation including director of European operations and later as vice president of marketing. Before joining Ansoft, Sherry spent two years with Intel Corporation, where she worked in the ASIC Group and developed relationships with companies such as Bell Northern Research and Northern Telecom. Sherry holds a BSEE and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. www.awrcorp.com.

To comment or ask Sherry a question, use the comment link at the bottom of the entry.

Click Here to take survey and win

Last time on this blog, Ted Miracco and I compared and contrasted the recent DAC and IMS shows, and shared some thoughts on why we think DAC seems to be waning while MTT just keeps on going strong.   This week I want to continue on with the DAC thought thread and talk a bit more about a  fairly major topic at DAC that dominated my experience this year—the Interoperable PDK Libraries Initiative (IPL).  This initiative, of which AWR is a founding member, was the subject of both a lunch and a pavilion panel discussion entitled, “Will Interoperable PDKs Fly in a Stodgy Analog World?” AWR helped sponsor the lunch (our third year doing so), but because of that and other commitments, I wasn’t able to attend the panel. The prevailing opinion is that the IPL panel discussion Panel Comments was the highlight of the show.  

The IPL was founded in 2007 with the idea of EDA firms and foundries coming together to look at problems and how to advance the industry through the creation and promotion of open standards for PDKs. Since its inception, the IPL Alliance has released a proof-of-concept interoperable PCell library, IPLnow.org, demonstrated interoperability among tools from multiple vendors (past 2 DACs) , and expanded its charter to address broader interoperability issues with foundry PDKs and design flows IPL News.This seems like quite good success already.

For those of you not familiar with the TLA IPL, it is an alliance that was originally spurred by the hot topic of Cadence’s proprietary-language process design kits that could not be used with other vendors’ tools.  In fact, I remember TSMC speaking a few years ago about how they had dozens of PDK engineers in Taiwan cranking out thousands of PDKs each year and that this could not scale over time to embrace new vendors, new tools and new processes from TSMC.  Thus the IPL seemed to be a viable alternative.  TSMC&IPL Comments  

The original idea of the consortium was that in the design world, more is good. Open up more tools, choice empowers innovation. Are people buying into this? Or does it just lead to confusion and a swapping of power from one industry leader to another? What do designers really want—to stick with the old or try the new?

I’ve been on both sides of this issue. I used to work for Ansoft, who kept their tools/flows closed.  Now at AWR, I see the opposite.  A company founded on the premise of a flexible software platform that allows for easy integration of alternate tools and technologies and consequently choice.   At AWR we believe choice is good and competition healthy.

I’m sure there are some great economists who have analogies and anecdotes to share on monopoly, oligopolies, duopolies and capitalism in general that likely map well to the above situation. 

Please chime in!  Take my survey on IPL and iPDKs so I can get a finger on the pulse of M&RF as it pertains to interoperability.  

Click Here to take survey and win Flip video camera

A prize will be awarded to one (or two) lucky survey takers that complete all of the questions.

Thoughts on DAC and IMS

August 22, 2009

Ted Miracco, Executive Vice President, joined AWR in 1997, and is currently focused  on AWR's corporate strategy, including worldwide sales, mergers & acquisitions and corporate marketing. Prior to joining AWR, Ted was a Senior Account Executive at Cadence Design Systems, Inc., a leading supplier of electronic design automation technology. At Cadence, Ted was responsible for developing solutions that could assist customers in accelerating the design of semiconductor, computer, and telecommunications systems. Before working at Cadence, Ted was responsible for Business Development and World-wide Corporate Accounts at EEsof, Inc. Ted holds double majors in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University where he also minored in and taught economics. Ted brings over 18 years of experience in engineering, marketing and technical sales.

Sherry Hess is vice president of marketing at AWR, bringing with her more than 15 years of EDA experience in domestic and international sales, marketing, support, and managerial expertise. For the majority of her career Sherry served in various positions at Ansoft Corporation including director of European operations and later as vice president of marketing. Before joining Ansoft, Sherry spent two years with Intel Corporation, where she worked in the ASIC Group and developed relationships with companies such as Bell Northern Research and Northern Telecom. Sherry holds a BSEE and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. www.awrcorp.com.

To comment or ask Ted and Sherry a question, use the comment link at the bottom of the entry.

July 27 marked the start of the 42^nd Design Automation Conference in San Francisco. For the second year, AWR elected not to exhibit but rather to have a few execs attend for meetings and to “audit” the show if you will.

Having just wrapped up a hugely successful and exciting IMS, I thought I’d talk about some of my impressions about the differences between DAC and IMS. Since AWR’s executive VP and long-time DAC/MTT veteran Ted Miracco also attended, I’ve invited him to share this blog with me because he has lots of good thoughts as well.

 

Ted:

Twenty years ago I attended my first DAC in Las Vegas and what a change 20 years makes! The 1989 DAC was a sizzling show with all the leading electronics and semiconductor companies from around the world gathered to see what new technology was available to streamline design and revolutionize product development. In 1989 the show included the leading hardware vendors of the day. Apollo Computer and Sun Microsystems were battling between themselves for the world’s fastest workstations while fending off IBM, Hewlett Packard and DEC, who were trying to muscle into this super hot market for engineering workstations.

The relatively new EDA industry included the “big three” of their day: Mentor Graphics, Daisy, and Valid Logic Systems plus the newcomer Cadence Design Systems. The show in those days really wasn’t about The Big Three, since there were also literally hundreds of start-ups, some well funded, some working out of garages, but all sharing a common energy and enthusiasm to shake up the world with new ideas.  Two of the hottest of the hot were Gateway Design with their Verilog simulator and Synopsys, who was a leader in a new technology called logic synthesis.

 

Sherry:

I remember those days at DAC as well.  It was a real mish-mash of hardware, software, and service vendors…a real eco-system for electronic design.  Looking back now, DAC has certainly changed.  On the flip side, both Ted and I have been attending IMS/MTT for just as long as DAC and my year after year impression is that IMS just keeps getting better.   Even in spite of the economy, IMS was thriving this year.   DAC, in contrast, seemed to be quietly dying.  Out side of the exhibit hall where Blueray and iPods were being raffled off, the halls were mostly quiet and not well-traversed by designers.  I have my own ideas about why the difference in these two shows.  Ted, what do you think?

 

Ted:

At this latest DAC, the first thing that struck me is, where are all the young people? All the new computer science grads and young engineers with ideas seem to be writing apps for the iPhone rather than trying to develop the software and algorithms that actually enabled the iPhone to exist in the first place. EDA is in a rather dismal state these days. With today’s largely ‘digital’ EDA industry being driven by the Big Three (Synopsys, Cadence & Mentor) and all them in a state of flux with “restructurings” and single digit stock prices, it’s no wonder the show is shrinking.   Synopsys, the hot start up from 1989, is today the biggest of the big and the only one that is weathering the storm with any semblance of grace or continuity. As far as startups, there are a few and I saw at least three companies doing really exciting things like timing validation, analog placement and advanced noise modeling in CMOS substrates, But the energy, the thrill of entrepreneurship appears to be gone….

 

Sherry:

Interesting perspective Ted.  The state of the EDA industry has seen brighter days, I’ll give you that.  But I also think that young people aren’t at DAC anymore because there really isn’t much being offered to satisfy their appetites for learning.   In contrast, MTT this year and all along, has been mobbed with students and grass roots engineers soaking up all the wireless information everywhere they look – a full eco-system of microwave & RF firms are on the show floor working side by side.  Perhaps also because IMS is run by, and thoroughly vetted by the IEEE, it is a solid and intellectually meaty forum.  IMS welcomes and encourages students and universities with a free student day, the student design contest and a student happy hour.

DAC, on the other hand, seems to have become more about high-level execs doing deals behind closed doors. The technical program isn’t very robust and anything technically exciting is being shown behind closed doors by appointment only in the private demo suites. At DAC there is no mixing of the execs and the general engineering community—no diversity if you will. At MTT, we’re all rubbing elbows out in the open, on the show floor and sharing information, opinions and insights.

 

Ted:

One of the things about DAC is that it has traditionally relied on the prestige of the EDA industry. With EDA now a mature commodity solution and almost exclusively driven by the big three, the ROI for the show as it pertains to small and medium firms like AWR just isn’t there.  Even in the heydays of DAC, the ROI was hard to justify but it was always argued that DAC was THE show to be seen at if you were a serious contender in the EDA industry. Essentially, most exhibitors didn’t go to DAC to make sales, they went because you would be conspicuous by your absence. This stopped being the case a few years back and we were one of the first to stop exhibiting.  Looking back now, it was and still is the right decision for AWR.

 

Sherry:

Thanks Ted for sharing your thoughts on DAC and IMS.  We agree that DAC is struggling to survive while IMS is thriving. The reasons behind this are likely many and we’ve touched upon our thoughts.  What else are we missing?  It would be great to hear more from the audience who attends one or both shows.  Also, how about next we chat about the state of the EDA industry in general?  What’s working and what’s not.  Thanks again Ted!

How ready are you to invest “skin in the game”?

July 22, 2009

Sherry Hess is vice president of marketing at AWR, bringing with her more than 15 years of EDA experience in domestic and international sales, marketing, support, and managerial expertise. For the majority of her career Sherry served in various positions at Ansoft Corporation including director of European operations and later as vice president of marketing. Before joining Ansoft, Sherry spent two years with Intel Corporation, where she worked in the ASIC Group and developed relationships with companies such as Bell Northern Research and Northern Telecom. Sherry holds a BSEE and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. www.awrcorp.com.

To comment or ask Sherry a question, use the comment link at the bottom of the entry.

How ready are you to invest “skin in the game”?

 

Successful companies know that getting to know your customers’ needs, issues, pain points, strengths and weaknesses results in a long term and growing business relationship. Each side demonstrates a willingness to invest time, money and resources into learning more about one another in order to realize the competitive and monetary gains that come as a result of putting your respective “skin in the game”—combining talents and sharing resources, expertise, knowledge.

 

I’m oversimplifying but this is how we at AWR feel about our customers.  You are our partners.  Your success is ultimately our success. We work alongside you to help ensure your success and we are very thankful when you are willing to share it with us and with others in the form of an AWR Customer Success Story, http://web.awrcorp.com/Usa/Success-Stories/  . But this is not what I’m trying to make this week’s blog about. Rather, my intent is to use it to generate a collective nodding of heads before I transfer this thought-thread elsewhere.

 

Pat Hindle of Microwave Journal Magazine shared this Business Week article, with me just after IMS.  The article from June 11^th is titled “Companies Willing to Take Risks in a Recession.”  I read it and wasn’t quite sure what to do with it but then last week, I got it.

 

A few lines from the Business Week article, written by Brian Burnsed, that I liked:

1)“In this unstable environment, managers need to strike the right balance between caution and boldness.”       

2)“The common thread among successful entrepreneurs is that they’re daring to be aggressive rather defensive amid the weak economy.       

3)“Don’t react to what competitors may be doing,” advises Dave McMahon, an associate professor of marketing at Pepperdine University.  “Carve your own niche.”     

 

The actual article itself discussed how this economy is presenting some great merger and acquisition opportunities, but the lines I reference above jumped out at me as being universal truisms.  Perhaps even more so in an unstable economic environment, we all need to find the right balance between caution and boldness to make sure our firms stay afloat, but why in good times should we lose sight of this edge?  Successful companies, and not just entrepreneurs, are those who continually take risks and don’t get too comfortable with their status quo (i.e. market share). 

 

Like customer relationships, marketing partnerships need to find the right balance between caution and boldness.  If neither side is willing to invest skin in the game and take on some risk, how in the world are we going to do something unique, different, intriguing for our mutual customer base??  It’s this thought that has me rejigging the last Business Week quote from Pepperdine and making it my own, “Don’t simply copy cat what competitors may be doing, put skin in the game and figure out how to carve your own niche.  But don’t stop there, follow through and make it happen!”

 

Why is it that some company-to-company partnerships shine and others merely fizzle?  I say it is the same reason that some customer relationships thrive and others don’t: it takes an equal willingness to invest time, resources, talent, expertise, etc. In other words, it takes an equal willingness to put “skin into the game.”

 

I love this phrase.  I use it internally to describe why some marketing relationships are more fruitful and productive than others.  When both partners literally put their “skin or sweat equity” into the relationship, only then will good things materialize.   Take for example AWR’s  announcement earlier this year about a marketing relationship with Anritsu Corporation. 

 

Long before this press release became public, we were fortunate enough to have two customers attend a standard Microwave Office training course in San Jose last summer.  The guys who sat next to one another were bright, energetic engineers—one from Anritsu and one from Marvell.  During a break, the customer from Marvell turned to his Anritsu classmate and said, “Hey, you know what would be great?” 

The guy from Anritsu said, “No, what?”

 

Marvell:  “Well, I have an Anritsu VNA back at my work lab and Microwave Office software in my cube on my PC.”

 

Anritsu: (nod)

 

Marvell:  “So wouldn’t it be ideal if I could have my Microwave Office design software in the lab running on my VNA so I can design and test concurrently, in real time?”

 

Anritsu:  “Yes. Sure. We could probably do it since the Anritsu VNAs are powerful PCs in their own right.”

 

What happened next was the start of “skin in the game” for AWR and Anritsu.  A car full of Anritsu guys (marketers, AEs, management, sales) drove down to LA from San Jose to chat with a room full of AWR folk (marketing, applications, sales, management). 

 

I’ll spare you the details of the relationship building, execution plan, and whatnot, but suffice it to say, neither AWR nor Anritsu were afraid to put their respective skins in the game and strike the right balance between caution and boldness.  This bundling of design software within the test equipment operating software is an industry first, and this was certainly the best of both companies carving out a new niche. 

 

 

If you’ve not paid attention to media coverage on this joint offering, you can find an article here:  http://web.awrcorp.com/Anritsu/VectorStar/ . 

Or better yet, take a look at this IMS-produced video that shows Anritsu and AWR talking about the advantages of the two company’s products combined, as well as an actual demo of the MWO software running on the Anritsu VectorStar VNA. www.awr.tv (Again, we balanced caution and risk to produce this on the show floor and to even bring it to you on AWR pioneered AWR.TV)

 

This is just one of many AWR partnership stories I’ve amassed in my storytelling repertoire since joining AWR two years ago.  What’s your story for putting skin in the game and doing something unique as a result?   While this marketing relationship may not be “engineering” in the sense that you all are used to thinking, it is “engineering” of a relationship/ partnership in order to deliver something new, unique and valuable to our mutual customers.  

 

 

Anticipating the Future

July 14, 2009

 


Mike Heimlich is currently product marketing director for AWR's Microwave Office® and Signal Integrity Design Suite™ product lines and responsible for university programs. Prior to joining AWR, he was an engineer with Watkins-Johnson, Pacific Monolithics, and M/A-COM. In 1996 he co-founded Smartlynx, whose interoperability technology forms the basis for AWR's PCB flow integrations. Mike authors numerous technical articles on high-frequency designs, multi-domain signal integrity analysis, and design tool interoperability. His current research interests include design flow analysis and modeling. Mike holds a PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI).
www.awrcorp.com.

To comment or ask Mike a question, use the comment link at the bottom of the entry.

Well, Sherry’s blog set me off again…..not in the sense that I was jealous of her spur-of-the-moment holiday in the Mediterranean.  I was thinking about how ubiquitous smartphones and 3G technology have become.  Mind you, I’m not a Luddite and, as an engineer, you would think that because my work enables so much change in other people’s lives that I too would embrace the latest tech trends as an early-adopter.  Instead, I prefer to wait for the technology to mature, age a bit like fine wine, so you can separate the “Beta” from the “VHS”.  And not that I need a clear winner as I’m perfectly happy with a world of iPhones and Blackberry’s (although, we do need a support group to help SOME people put them down when they are on vacation).   But let’s face it:  3G technology is reshaping what we do with mobile technology.

Underlying the explosion are advances in wireless circuits and systems.  Early mobile phones and pagers were testimonies to manufacturer’s purchasing departments - with a shopping list that rivaled the space shuttle.  Like most stories in consumer electronics, the establishment of mobile telecommunications as a consumer success story was followed by a drive to lower cost led by integration and miniaturization.  Wireless circuit designers saw specifications move from discrete components to single function MMICS and then to multifunction MMICs as GSM/EDGE and CDMA handsets became as inexpensive and indispensible as ballpoint pens.  3G, mobile telecomm/computing fusion, and “greener” power consumption have pushed front-ends from MMICs to modules.

I remember back in 2004 visiting more than a few suppliers to the handset manufacturers.  While it was clear that the path to their future success was in the direction of module design, there was a good deal of fear and loathing in what was on the horizon.  Some thought that “module design” was going to mean just integrating some MMICs and passives on a low layer count PCB using a PCB layout tool.  Other’s thought it was a super-MMIC in a QFN  package with a  handful of SMD caps.  Still others sought to combine several IC technologies to optimize performance by a “best in class” approach.  Needless to say, it was not clear how, as an EDA supplier, we were going to meet this diverse set of visions for the future of handset component design.

What excited me was the concept of an industry that was supposed to be dying on the vine actually reinventing itself.  I’ve had past co-workers move from GaAs MMIC design wholesale over to silicon saying that it was inevitable as CMOS dimensions got smaller; I even catch myself stealing a line from one of my wiser engineer elders that “GaAs is the material of the future and always will be” giving that world’s gallium would be quickly depleted if it had to replace silicon over night.  Others left analog frontend design altogether to develop software defined radios based on DSP speeds approaching wireless carrier frequencies.  But here were people with cutting edge design requirements embracing front end analog design and non-silicon technologies (at least in part) as the path forward for years to come.

At AWR, I have to say, there were just as many internal opinions as could be found in the industry we were supporting.  Do we focus on the physical design challenges of module design?  For some, the mantra, was the system level….design at the system level!  Others wanted to focus on the simulation challenges and how do you ensure 3G performance at the circuit level.  Still others saw EM as the bottleneck.   I remember taking all this and putting it into a presentation to propose a cooperative effort at a few of the major component vendors as a basis for establishing a “next generation” module design system.    Almost universally, I was met with an interesting reaction.  It wasn’t skepticism about AWR’s ability to deliver such a solution but rather a lack of certainty as to the path forward.  It was Beta versus VHS all over again.  Or was it GSM vs W-CDMA?

Much to the credit of AWR’s leadership, we actually moved forward on nearly all the approaches.  Physical design was beefed up to handle the inclusion of multiple IC technologies simultaneously, including silicon with GaAs or even GaAs on silicon, along with the PCB substrate and the package.  System simulation flowed up to algorithm development through analog impairments (for budgeting, frequency planning, and performance like EVM or BER) down to circuit design and back up again.  Simulation capacity was increased by orders of magnitude and was extended to include single-schematic driven linear, nonlinear steady-state, and transient simulations, as well as LVS/DRC verification.   Verification was also made possible with breakthrough advances in EM and how it integrates to the circuit design flow as a whole. 

What came out of this was not so much four or five new flows based on the 2004 visits.  Certainly, the requests of each of the customer groups were satisfied, and I have no doubt that they were satisfied, at least in part, by their input being addressed and returned as enhanced functionality.  The best part for me of the whole exercise was the emergence of module design.  Sure, people had been talking about designing modules with interconnected MMICs since the 1980’s, but here was design of the module being done as the module—trading off MMIC performance at the transistor or passive component level across die and in the package—and not as a lab bench exercise in post-design hardware integration.  The concurrent design of  the whole module, not just the circuit simulation or the MMICs or the layout, has become a reality and the path forward.

So how are you designing modules?  Has your design process been a success story of like VHS over Beta?  Are you still “duking it out” with a great war story?  Maybe it’s more like GSM/Edge and W-CDMA and a 3G success story.

Thoughts on the Wireless Revolution... from Vacationland

July 1, 2009

Sherry Hess is vice president of marketing at AWR, bringing with her more than 15 years of EDA experience in domestic and international sales, marketing, support, and managerial expertise. For the majority of her career Sherry served in various positions at Ansoft Corporation including director of European operations and later as vice president of marketing. Before joining Ansoft, Sherry spent two years with Intel Corporation, where she worked in the ASIC Group and developed relationships with companies such as Bell Northern Research and Northern Telecom. Sherry holds a BSEE and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. www.awrcorp.com.

To comment or ask Sherry a question, use the comment link at the bottom of the entry.

Gosh, what happened to June?  IMS came and went and for AWR it was very successful, so I opted to take a spur of the moment vacation to the Mediterranean Sea.  On the flight over, I bought Business Week, Time, etc. for "blog" inspiration.  Once there, I read the Herald Tribune and my Blackberry for more inspiration.  I asked friends for thoughts, ideas, ...anything, but nothing grabbed me.  Maybe I need more exciting friends?  My vacation came and went, and there I was on the return flight, still thinking....huh, what shall I write about...energy harvesting and scavenging?  I am intrigued by that concept but not sure the microwave/RF community shares my passion:-) Open-access and the quagmire of EDA databases offered by vendors...snooze-fest!  3D glasses and my MWJ video interview?  But then it hit me, as I was walking through the front door of my home back in Manhattan Beach--I'll write about what I did on my vacation!  

Maybe the prior blog about Professor Zoya and her students had me in the mood, I'm not quite sure, but if you're buying the tie-in, good!  Ok, so what did I do on my vacation?  Well, let's see.  I sat around on my butt a lot either pool side or beach side but that's not the point. What I did do was notice all the ways that the wireless revolution has changed my life and everyone else's...even on vacation.

Upon landing in Europe, it was the GPS to the rescue to guide me to my final destination.  What did we all do before GPS?  And even along the route, the tollway was high-tech with EZPass (or the EU equivalent) and smart cards for payment.   At the hotel, I opted not to use the alarm on my Blackberry to wake me but even sitting around the pool, more than half the people were checking their Blackberries, iPhones and even laptop/netbook computers.   The beach wasn't any different and dare I say, sailboats too.  In the old days I would have spent a small fortune to put through overseas calls to my kids every night and sent postcards via snail mail (which would have arrived after my return). Now Blackberry to the rescue for emails and sms text to kids so I'm in constant touch. For tourist photo taking, mp3 playing, newspaper headline reading, horoscope checking, whatever I wanted to do, it seemed like my Blackberry could do it, instantly.   On the beach, at the pool, in the gym, in the room, at dinner, out dancing, ....no matter where or when, I was not alone with my wireless lifeline.  

I'm not advocating Blackberry over iPhones or other devices, I have an iPhone too.  But I digress. The point I want to share springs from an article that came across my desk just the other day:  Apples's iPhone 3GS Costs $178.96 to Manufacture  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/38186.php (and the list of parts comes from a who's who of our industry)  After having a quick read of it and making note of the "RF & Microwave" suppliers like Broadcom, Infineon and TriQuint, I smiled. It made me realize just how fitting AWR's tagline of 'Advancing the wireless revolution' truly is.  Whether you are an AWR customer, employee or friend, I know you share our passion for embracing the wireless revolution at work or play or even on vacation like me:-) This vacation really brought home to me how exciting it is to be a part of an industry that has had such a dramatic global impact on our ability to communicate and stay in touch.

Has anyone else out there had an "ah-ha" moment lately about the RF/microwave role in changing the world? Share your thoughts with us, or even just your summer vacation stories. Let's have some fun this summer!

 

More thoughts on creative destruction, articles on trend spotting, the IMS and youth - Is this deja vu, all over again ??

June 17, 2009

Sherry Hess is vice president of marketing at AWR, bringing with her more than 15 years of EDA experience in domestic and international sales, marketing, support, and managerial expertise. For the majority of her career Sherry served in various positions at Ansoft Corporation including director of European operations and later as vice president of marketing. Before joining Ansoft, Sherry spent two years with Intel Corporation, where she worked in the ASIC Group and developed relationships with companies such as Bell Northern Research and Northern Telecom. Sherry holds a BSEE and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. www.awrcorp.com.

To comment or ask Sherry a question, use the comment link at the bottom of the entry.

Creative destruction.  On a flight two weeks ago on American Airlines, I read an article in their May 15th issue of American Way called "Trend Spotter"  In it, Marian Salzman listed her Ten trends that are changing everything from consumerism to the business landscape throughout the modern world. 

Number 8 is the trend that got me smiling! 

8. Not without technology: Whatever else may disappear in the “creative destruction” of the crisis, technology is here to stay. Some may yearn for simpler times and the satisfaction of hand tools, but the plain truth is that the future lies in mastering new technologies.

That was cool. And then as I was walking around IMS this past week, I bumped into a few of you who recognized me from my blog and we discussed creative destruction.  Fun!  I like this interest and idea exchange.  So then I began to wonder what news was being presented at IMS that could be considered “creative destruction”.  I'd like to hear from you on what you saw or are seeing that could fall into this thought thread. 

For now, I'm going to head in a slightly different direction and look back to President Kennedy's challenge in the 1960s to put a man on the moon within 10 years.  Everyone thought it would be impossible, but only 8 years later, Neil Armstrong became the first man to step foot onto the moon.  While this is a magnificent moment in and of itself, what I found more shocking was that the average age of the NASA employees in Houston/mission control was 26.  That means when the challenge was issued, many of those in the room were 18 years old.  The power of youth, the "I can do anything" mentality is what I find awe -inspiring. 

On the show floor, I heard Cobham comment about how we need more young people coming into the RF & microwave field.  Certainly walking the aisles you get a sense of the aging of our business.  Maybe the students didn't have the funds to travel during this recession, but it should cause us to pause and reflect.  Likewise, I met with Zoya Popovic of UC Boulder who also commented about trying to attract more young persons into microwaves & RF.  To re-introduce the “cool factor” in engineering, Zoya is creatively reconstructing her MMIC design course to move away from pure theoretical design. Her newest course incorporates not only actual virtual design (which features the AWR software environment), but also teams up with TriQuint Semiconductor to have the students’ designs fabricated.  In her first trial of the course last fall, she had eight students take part.  When the chips came back, the semester was over but the majority of students found the time to come back to the lab to test/measure their devices so that they could close the loop by comparing the simulated to measured results. In a way, the students took the initiative to self-evaluate their own designs and abilities. This is the enthusiasm of youth that put us on the moon in 8 years.

Zoya is now wrapping up her second offering of the course with 23 students and going to repeat it in the fall with more than 50 persons already pre-registered.  Wow, this trend is great!  Certainly, making engineering more tangible with hands-on design is always a great thing for attracting talent and students.  Providing them with tools for design other than paper and pencil, outfit the students quite readily for employment in the real-world.  Zoya is not alone with her efforts to reconstruct course work to entice more students over into the one industry that no doubt will be leading the creative destruction era of the years ahead.

To once again quote Marian, "the plain truth is that the future lies in mastering new technologies," and to me the future is only going to become more high-tech and wireless.  This is where the bright minds of our younger generation will focus whether we call them microwave engineers or wireless engineers or even creative destruction engineers.  I feel inspired that the younger generation - just like the 1960s revealed to us - will be what shapes our future high-tech world.  For those of you like me and raising kids, I find this quite exciting!

 

The Rest of the Story

June 3, 2009

 


Mike Heimlich is currently product marketing director for AWR's Microwave Office® and Signal Integrity Design Suite™ product lines and responsible for university programs. Prior to joining AWR, he was an engineer with Watkins-Johnson, Pacific Monolithics, and M/A-COM. In 1996 he co-founded Smartlynx, whose interoperability technology forms the basis for AWR's PCB flow integrations. Mike authors numerous technical articles on high-frequency designs, multi-domain signal integrity analysis, and design tool interoperability. His current research interests include design flow analysis and modeling. Mike holds a PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI).
www.awrcorp.com.

To comment or ask Mike a question, use the comment link at the bottom of the entry.

Reading Sherry Hess’s blog got me to thinking about Paul Harvey and “the rest of the story.”  For those of you who haven’t lived in the U.S. Heartland or don’t listen to AM radio much anymore, Harvey made a career out of the kind of human interest stories, historical vignettes, or short biographies that are out of fashion today by feeding you an anonymous, out of context story-line only to reveal “the rest of the story” later in the program to make a point, teach you some history, or touch your heart.  Sherry’s discussion of productivity makes me think of the rest of the story:  the technical side and where some people are on the design “productivity curve”.

There are two halves to measuring productivity or cycle time.  First, how long does it take you to get one prototype into manufacturing.  Second, how many prototypes, or iterations, does it take to get your design into production manufacturing.   You can imagine that to some extent one can be traded off with the other, but given the way that a team designs, the design tools they may use, and a whole host of other factors, the idea of improving design productivity can become an engineering discipline unto itself.
Engineers using new technology have longer cycle times as they debug the technology with more prototypes.  Conversely, in mature technologies, you would expect that everyone optimizes their design process, taking advantage of all the EDA out there, to have minimum design cycle times and iterations.  But not everyone takes advantage of what’s out there and all designers don’t design using the same process.  For guys getting less than two spins per design on average, there just isn’t a lot of room to  eek out even more productivity.

For some folks, there’s still a whole lot of EDA to take advantage of to “ride” the productivity curve
Case in point, back before LVS and DRC (everyone out there is using them now, right?) you could pretty much count on getting nipped by these, even with a squad of diligent designers, a scaled ruler, and a light table.  Implementing DRC alone might save you a couple of spins and make a huge impact on your productivity. After getting DRC done, LVS is a little more challenging and costs slightly more but maybe now you are down around 3 spins per design and getting a full spin out of your productivity is a one-third reduction. 

So where are you on the design productivity curve and, to Sherry’s point, is the economic downturn a time to regroup and improve or scale back and let others take the lead?  What are you doing in terms of new tools or even just better utilizing the EDA, measurement, and modeling resources you already own?  Is it just a matter of taking a finer or holistic view of your flow, or starting from scratch?

I worked with one MMIC design house that is known for its leading-edge design abilities where they actually approached us and said, “this is where we see EDA needing to be in 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years.”   Oddly enough, they had been using DRC and LVS for more than a decade, but they had targeted this as a critical step in their flow that they felt was costing them.  Before I got to hear “the rest of the story”, I thought to myself, “how is that possible given that they have been using DRC/LVS tools longer than most?”  The answer is that they took a step back and didn’t just look at DRC and LVS, but they looked at how DRC/LVS evolved from and integrated with the rest of the flow.  They saw that their DRC layout and LVS schematic where not originating from the same design tools—they actually re-entered the LVS schematic by hand and apart from the DC/RF simulatable schematic,the layout was a flattened design in a layout system separate from their RF design tools.  The solution we came up with for them was to shift their layout designers to doing the layout in the same tool as the RF guys and adding some features which allow the same AWR schematic to be used for circuit simulation, system verification, and LVS.  The result – cutting their verification time by more than 50%.  While I’m not giving details of exactly who this customer is, you can validate my claims by reading one of the many AWR customer success story up on the website (link here).

Second point.  One thing I have been guilty of, and a host of my EDA brethren as well, is remembering that everything that is designed and fabbed needs to be measured.  For sure, you need to measure it make sure that performance can be understood and compared to simulation.  After all, the proof is in the pudding.  But if you look at the design flow—the critical path of getting from design concept to volume manufacturing—how, when, and why is measurement being done.  I had one design manager tell me that it was critical that engineers got on the bench; no argument here! Sole reliance on EDA software in RF/microwave design is a fool’s game, in my experience.  But then he followed it up with the “rest of the story”.  He wants his engineers to do almost no design and get out to the bench and start measuring since they found years ago that the sooner engineers were measuring circuits, the sooner the design got out the door.  If that sounds to you like throwing the baby out with the bath water, you’re in good company.  Unlike my friends revisiting DRC/LVS, this manager has not looked at how good and timely design makes for a more efficient and effective time in measurement. 

Conversely, I’ve had other managers with similar experience tell me they are down to 1.7 or so spins per design and the limiting factor is measurement as part of the design process…..sounds to me like an opportunity to start another “rest of the story”…..

So  where are you in terms of your productivity “story”?  Blog back to me about your vision and efforts to write “the rest of the story!”

Harvard Business Review, Al Gore and Creative Destruction - What does that have to do with IMS?

May 28, 2009

Sherry Hess is vice president of marketing at AWR, bringing with her more than 15 years of EDA experience in domestic and international sales, marketing, support, and managerial expertise. For the majority of her career Sherry served in various positions at Ansoft Corporation including director of European operations and later as vice president of marketing. Before joining Ansoft, Sherry spent two years with Intel Corporation, where she worked in the ASIC Group and developed relationships with companies such as Bell Northern Research and Northern Telecom. Sherry holds a BSEE and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. www.awrcorp.com.

To comment or ask Sherry a question, use the comment link at the bottom of the entry.

I guess not a lot is keeping you all up at night since no one fessed-up. I lose sleep frequently given my type A personality but that’s a whole different thought topic for a separate blog. However, this “all is quiet” response reminded me of another article I read recently in the Harvard Business Review.  My favorite passage, which I think describes what’s happening amongst us is this... “This hesitancy to make waves becomes stronger in times of general economic turmoil.”

I certainly recognize that many of us are too worried about our own jobs to present an out-of-the-box idea right now and so hopefully my blog can stoke the fires on your behalf.  With IMS nearly here and the economy still in a fragile state, I am reminded of my attendance at CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas in early April.  This trade show was huge – certainly much larger in size than I had expected and the keynote speaker on the last day totally caught me off guard -- Al Gore!

He said a number of things that were witty, insightful, self deprecating, etc.  But a phrase from his talk that I had never heard before has stuck with me: “creative destruction.”  It made me think about our wireless world and how significantly technology has changed in only a short decade or two. The concept is, effectively, that to drive an economy forward we will yield to a cycle of creative destruction…think of the typewriter to the computer, land line phones to cellphones and PDAs to today’s touch screen Blackberries and iPhones.  These creative ideas were at a cost to an existing technology but what manifested itself at the end was an even bigger opportunity for market growth.

Gore continued on and offered up what could be current "creative destructors" presently in our midst.  He talked (not surprisingly) about the greening of our energy grid.  Replacing infrastructure that, although costly, time-consuming, and a whole host of other factors /reasons to object to the idea results in a stronger, more thriving economy in the end. Jotting his ideas down here seems anti-climactic to the actual talk, so let me just say, if you have the chance to here him speak live, you should do it.  Ok, so after that show, I came back to my office and googled “creative destruction.” Then my brain started to think about what creative destruction is happening before our eyes right now?  What will we see at IMS that we can classify as “creative destruction?"  

If I parallel Gore’s infrastructure change into RF EDA, I can envision the tool infrastructure trend to be that of full flow design environments vs. disparate point tools that require extensive, time-consuming manual effort.  Look to AWR for inclusion of AXIEM and recently-acquired Analyst for 3D FEM EM into our design environment.  Look to ICED in the DRC/LVS flow.  Look to our founding member status in IPL (interoperable PDK libraries) to move IC vendors to a common PDK philosophy.  Look to our AWR Connected partnerships with Anritsu, Mentor Graphics and shortly Rohde & Schwarz.

Or if I look to our foundry partners like TriQuint, Win and Cree to name a few, there are on-going infrastructure tussle over GaAs, GaN, SiGe, BiCMOS etc for a whole host of applications and markets.  Two topics that immediately come to mind from the IMS' technical program that could be a possible creative destructive topic are: Is GaN ready for system insertion?  and  SiGe/CMOS RF-IC Phased Arrays: will they be used in defense and commercial systems?

Digging a bit deeper, this reminded me of something a high-level person at a big foundry shared recently with AWR....Foundry X is using the current economic uncertainty/time span to review its strategy - to develop new technologies as well as to fill in the details on older ones that we have been too busy (i.e., cranking out wafers) to address.  Is Foundry X and others exploring these new technologies  in anticipation or preparation or precaution to creative destruction?  Time will tell. 
 
In the end, creative destruction is about breaking down legacy barriers in order to spawn new products and grow new markets or expand current market share in a way that advances and benefits the entire industry.  It takes an eye for the future, not the past, and AWR is and always has been a company with its eyes on the future and the possibilities that lie ahead…most importantly how our flagship Microwave Office design environment can provide you with the RF EDA infrastructure /  innovations that will reduce your time to market and give you a competitive edge today, tomorrow and well into the future!