Product Development Challenges Ahead of us

Dear Readers,

Last week we saw glimpses of transformational technologies worth keeping a watch on. We may not be able to cope with today’s design approaches for developing products in the future. This week, let’s look at some of the challenges we are likely to face – may be we are already facing them to some degree! Please read on!

Product development is becoming an extremely complex affair and will encounter lot more challenges in the coming years.

Engineers and the product development teams will have to consider the following aspects right at the concept stage and can no longer afford to look at them as discrete, independently solvable issues:

1. Performance, Power, Portability considerations
2. Area/real estate
3. Cost, Productivity
4. Thinning line between:
1. Hardware and Software
2. Chip - Board - Package
3. Analog - Digital
5. Design for Testability
6. Design for Manufacturability
7. Design for Environment (DFE)
8. Design for Yield
9. Time to volumes and profits

The design methodology is moving towards tackling all the above issues together rather than treating them independently. However the EDA methodologies are nowhere closer to this goal as of today. Major shifts in Design Methodologies (disruptive methodologies) have emerged once in about 15 to 18 years and one is over due now!

The future methodologies will move (and already moving) to a higher abstraction level (Electronic System Level). They will use abstract and behavioral inputs to spit out designs. UML is becoming an obvious choice. System Level Modeling will mature and will become a common approach. Engineers will no longer be able to specialize on specific skills like design, layout, manufacturing etc, but will have to address the above issues in total.

There are two ways to look at the productivity problem:

1. Can the existing design be done in 1/10 the time it took earlier?
2. Can a designer churn out designs 10 times more complex within the same duration?

Looking at the evolutionary trends, it would be the latter that will become dominant in the future. Moreover EDA companies will move towards offering Unified Tools that simultaneously address all the issues mentioned above, thereby eliminating many unknowns and interface issues. This will boost productivity to a large extent.

Future products will combine Nano technology, Biology, Information technology and Cognitive sciences and a new convergence will emerge. This will call for radical changes in design approaches. There will be radical changes in the way we design the future products. New business models will revolutionize the chip industry – moving from a “department store” to a “specialty store” model. Let’s ride with the wave. There are enough things on our plate to digest rather than worry about an oncoming cyclic downturn! Together let’s create a better future!!

Looking forward to an enthusiastic discussion on this topic.

Will meet you again next week!

Paddy