Friday of last week I get home, sit down, and feel that the weekend has begun. Almost immediately, I get an email from Nanette Collins, who does press relations for a lot of companies, so I figure it's probably some announcement. It is, indeed, an announcement. But it's a big one. It's a press release from the ESD Alliance that they have signed a memorandum of understanding to become a SEMI strategic association partner. The warm treacly press-release language says: As a SEMI Strategic Association Partner, the ESD Alliance will continue to act as the central voice of the semiconductor design industry to promote its value as a vital component of the global electronics manufacturing supply chain. The mission of its technical programs, initiatives and events will not change and, with SEMI’s global infrastructure, will expand its geographic reach. Aart (we only need first names in EDA) is quoted as saying: The semiconductor industry has grown and matured since the EDA Consortium was formed. Many of the previously disparate areas within the industry now overlap and it’s obvious we need to address the supply chain from manufacturing all the way through design. The ESD Alliance represents the system design ecosystem and perfectly aligns with SEMI’s vision to support the entire supply chain. As an international organization with offices around the globe, SEMI gives the ESD Alliance an opportunity to expand its reach and grow to its full potential. For those of you for whom these organization names are confusing, here's my quick guide: EDA Consortium (usually just called EDAC) was the original organization set up in 1989 to represent the interests of the EDA industry. Note that date. In 1989, Cadence was one year old, merging SDA and ECAD that had just a few years of history. Synopsys had just been founded. TSMC was one year old and building its first fab. Arm was still part of Acorn. The GSM mobile standard existed but nobody had yet built a network. There were hundreds of EDA startups. It was the era when semiconductor design was being democratized, emerging from the secret cloisters of the semiconductor companies (today we call them IDMs, but we didn't back then) into system companies, a few new-fangled fabless semiconductor companies. Doug Fairbairn, boss of design technology at VLSI when I first came to the US, but by then at Cadence after the acquisition of Redwood Design Automation, was the driver to getting EDAC off the ground. The ESD Alliance (never just called ESDA) is the new name for EDAC, acknowledging that with IP, embedded software, and system design all being significant, that the old name wasn't really appropriate. I rather like old names. A couple of decades ago the ACM had a ballot as to whether it should change its name from the quaint Association of Computing Machinery, which makes it sound like everyone works on mechanical difference engines, but the members liked the old name and it has stayed. You can read a bit more background about the transition in my post EDAC Becomes the Electronic System Design Alliance . SEMI is an organization that represents the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain. As it happens, Ajit Manocha, the CEO of SEMI, presented the history of SEMI to the press at the recent SEMICON China, which I covered in Ajit and the History of SEMI so I won't repeat that here. Bob Smith The first thing I did after reading the press release was to email Bob Smith. He's the executive director of the ESD Alliance. You can still read my Semiwiki post about his appointment EDAC Game of Thrones . Bob turned out to be in New Orleans for French Quarter Fest this weekend, but unfortunately, it has been canceled due to a huge incoming storm and the threat of flooding. So instead of sipping on sazeracs and vieux carrés, he had time to talk to me. Bob had planned the trip months ago, and it was only decided late last week to issue the press release immediately since so many people needed to be told. They faced the same problem as the Spectre and Meltdown authors, that you can't both tell everyone who needs to be told and keep it a secret from the general public. The first question I asked was about DAC. What was its future? Bob pointed out that ESD Alliance doesn't run DAC but "we believe it is a very important show and we want to see it continue." DAC is a technical conference and a tradeshow and there is no desire to split that up. Of course, they did notify DAC about the change a week or so ago at the sponsor committee meeting. In fact, Bob emphasized, they want to find a way to grow DAC (and its European little sister DATE) as they have done this year with the Design Infrastructure area where Microsoft, Amazon, Google and more are exhibiting (yes, design infrastructure is largely a way of saying "cloud"). So what exactly is a "SEMI strategic association partner"? At the boring structural level The ESD Alliance will go from being a California non-profit to being part of SEMI. The staff will all stay. The member companies of ESD Alliance will all become SEMI members, with all the advantages. SEMI has a number of programs, from vertical market initiatives (such as automotive), to talent development (to inspire students to study STEM subjects, but then also get a share to work in semiconductor and not all go to Google). Many of these programs, including these two, have an EDA/IP aspect to them already. The market statistics service (MSS) will continue. Actually, it should strengthen, since SEMI already does a lot of data analysis (if you want to know how many 200mm fabs are under construction in China, they can tell you...or sell you a full report). There are actually three previous strategic association partners: FlexTech (flexible hybrid manufacturers), MSIG (MEMS and sensors) and the Fab Owners Association (FOA), which mainly represents the interests of the smaller, mostly 200mm, fabs. The mechanics of bringing ESD Alliance into SEMI will be complete by the end of the year, but mostly it will happen in the next couple of months. If they had done this last year, they wouldn't even have to move offices since ESD Alliance worked out of the SEMI offices on Montague Expressway. But SEMI recently moved to Milpitas, and ESD Alliance to Redwood City. The ESD Alliance (and EDAC before) were very North American focused (Silicon Valley really). But there are members in Finland, Romania, Britain, Japan and more who would like to see some events in their regions. SEMI has a much bigger international reach, with offices in Silicon Valley (Milpitas), Bangalore, Berlin, Brussels, Grenoble, Hsinchu, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, and Washington D.C. They run SEMICON conferences all over the world, most notably the recent one in Shanghai (for an overview, see my post SEMICON China: Big, Really Big ). ESD Alliance Panel If yiou are looking for the ESD Alliance panel post, that was billed in this spot on last week's What's for Breakfast? video, it will appear tomorrow. Sign up for Sunday Brunch, the weekly Breakfast Bytes email.![]()
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