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Semiconductor Design Acceleration through Enterprise Architecture

John Shute / July 29, 2015

Accelerate your design lifecycle by adopting a Semiconductor Enterprise Architecture Framework

By John Shute – from Etairos Premier Semi/EDA Expertise Center

 

For those in the semiconductor design industry who have gone through with the process of developing a solid Enterprise Architecture (EA) program, the benefit is there!  Though perhaps painful to hammer out all the necessary steps, they know that finally their IT team is aligned and understands the business.   By now, they are seeing their EA endeavor reap significant rewards in the race to tape out.

While there are numerous benefits of a semiconductor design firm adopting an EA program, let’s look at three likely benefits which merit serious consideration:

  1. Your compute infrastructure costs will go down significantly
  2. You will be able to introduce new technologies into the environment sooner and with less interruption to the business
  3. The documentation and definition of your firm’s IT environment will better describe how your business runs

Included in the guiding principles of most EA frameworks is the fundamental goal of alignment between business goals and IT operations.  The exercise of road mapping a design firm’s short and long term business goals alongside IT team’s coordinated activities serves to help both entities gain greater insight into the level of effort needed to ensure the goals are met.  In doing so, the rather hefty cost a firm pays for poor coordination between both parties, reflected in poor leveraging of resources,  is saved.  It is often during the planning activities of these EA-based activities that each side finds efficiencies that produce meaningful savings – whether those efficiencies are in introducing new and better technology or in the planful provisioning and supply chain activities that take advantage of discounts and ensure delays are avoided.

A key benefit to the EA mapping exercise is that the priorities of engineering and information technology are realized and aligned. All IT priorities do not fit engineering, and visa-versa. Once understood, both parties now have a common ground on which to embark.

Equally worth noting, the myriad of approaches that various EA frameworks offer in depicting the environment through architectural blueprints, business term definition, and technology components establish a multifaceted lexicon.  This new dictionary, so to speak, facilitates an all-around better understanding of how what IT operates is consumed by the business.  From this are a variety of benefits that equate to savings – the reduction of redundant systems, an expedited time to market, and a prompt and effective evaluative process of new technology offerings as they arise.

As the industry moves through 14 nanometer and beyond, it is imperative that you have agility in scaling your infrastructure.  Though it may seem like a roadblock to productivity, it is the entrance ramp to the design superhighway required to complete your designs.

Getting stated with an EA program an be a daunting task.  Etarios can guide you with as much or as little help as you’d like. Please check out https://www.etairos.com to see what Etairos can do for you!

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