|
|
|
The Industry of Microelectronics Design
This strategic industry has been given a number of ambiguous or misleading nick-names, from Cores, through Silicon IP (Intellectual Property) to Virtual Components, but it nonetheless is real and growing.
What it really is: the supply chain in the following three dimensions
of
- Design for Reuse processes, and their consultants,
- CAD solutions (frameworks and platforms) and
- Off-the-shelf Reusable subsets for Systems-on-Chip (Virtual Components
with sockets and interconnect specifics).
The DOLPHIN Group is partaking in the shaping of its managerial, legal,
promotional and sales practices in all these dimensions.
On the managerial side, the issues of "collective creativity"
is at the boundary of artistic production and thus requires an adequate
corporate culture. Its catalysis is at the cross-roads of deep psychological
findings as well as sociological practices, recently inspired by the
myths of tribal leadership.
For technical standardization, this Industry's actors have launched
the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA): www.vsi.org but the deductions have not been drawn as to the new design practices and relevant EDA solutions required for true hierarchical synthesis and layout.
On the promotional side, new Internet-centered practices have been
pulled, noticeably from the same province of the Dolphin, with the now
world renowned Web site of Design and Reuse: www.design-reuse.com
as well as (to name some on a growing list): www.dacafe.com
or www.eedesign.com
and for best illustrating the worldwide impact of this Microelectronics
Design Industry: www.itri.com
Consequently linguistic issues pop-up all the time, with the double
syndrome:
- not only is the English language a poor substitute to vernacular
languages since non-fluent users of a foreign language cannot memorize
a message even when they slowly understand it, while big suppliers like to
impose their own language and ways of thinking or negotiating
- but on top of that, suppliers love their in-bred technical vocabularies and
techniques and are reluctant to apply to them the cybernetician's
Black-Box modelling, which leads to rephrasing their inner concepts from
the external point of view of users so as to emphasize operating methods instead of black-box
innards…
