Introduction
Herein we return our attention to the phenomenon of the rise of Intellectual Property (IP) in the world’s Electronics Industry, a segment of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) that Henke Associates began reporting on separately in 2003.
At the beginning, we covered eight (8) publicly-traded IP companies originally (called the "Group-of-8" or "G8"), as representative of the financial state of the nascent Electronics IP Industry. Subsequently, ARM absorbed Artisan Components in 2004; Mentor Graphics acquired LogicVision in 2009; and Synopsys bought Virage Logic in 2010. So nowadays, when we report on the Electronics IP Industry quarterly financials, the G5 below are included:
Today we devote the current October 17, 2011 issue of EDA WEEKLY to CEVA, Inc., whose headquarters are officially in Mountain View, CA:
For text review and fact checking this new article on CEVA, we have again invited into service Mr. Mike Sottak of WiredIslandPR. Mike was first introduced to EDA WEEKLY readers as part of the EDA WEEKLY issue entitled, “Welcome SpringSoft,” first posted on May 02, 2011:
Please enjoy the following status report on CEVA.
“We see CEVA as the next ARM in mobile growth.”
Barclays Capital
When you are in the semiconductor IP business and people start referring to you as the ‘next ARM’, you must be doing something right.
Such is the case with long-time Digital Signal Processing (DSP) IP supplier CEVA, which has been quietly gaining market share against traditional DSP[1] chip suppliers, racking up design wins at key chip makers, systems companies and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in high growth markets such as wireless communications and mobile computing devices. CEVA, analysts say, is following the proven model that ARM used to establish dominance in the CPU space (to the point where even the world’s largest chip maker, Intel, feels their pressure), but with a key difference – CEVA has a laser focus on DSP.
Like ARM, CEVA has patiently and steadily built a following of adopters – the company has close to 300 licensing agreements in place -- who see the time and costs benefits of the company’s strategy: supplying high-performance, low-power and flexible solutions to enable a range of digital processing applications. CEVA has achieved a market share of 41% in the baseband DSP market (source: Strategy Analytics, CEVA internal data), and, as its design wins mature and expand, the company’s royalty-based model is fueling even more growth. Last year CEVA’s technology was shipped in more than 600 million chips and it projects that that figure will double within 2 years. As it expands its focus on next-generation wireless (e.g. 4G/LTE), as well as the proliferation of portable multimedia and home entertainment applications, the company’s growth is set to continue.
Like ARM, CEVA is well-positioned in a perfect storm of change happening in the IC design world. First, chip developers and system makers are shunning the inflexibility and high costs of using discrete DSP chips or ASICs for DSP functionality. CEVA’s approach is to deliver licensable solutions that can be integrated into system-on-chip (SoC) designs – and offer a degree of programmability and customization not previously available from fixed architecture offerings. Second, as consumer markets are thirsting for more and more digital content and higher quality in mobile devices, DSP technology’s importance continues to escalate. A programmable DSP solution that can deliver the processing horsepower, combined with the low power consumption needed by portable devices, are just the features that product developers need.
It’s no wonder that the entire world’s top-selling mobile handsets have CEVA inside. And top electronics brands, including heavyweights like Intel, ST-Ericsson, Broadcom, MediaTek, Samsung, LG, Sony, and Spreadtrum, to name just a few of the high profile CEVA licensees, use the company’s DSP solutions. As analysts from Barclays Capital wrote in a recent report on CEVA, “Handset vendors compete on features and functionality, not the DSP, and CEVA is the merchant beneficiary of this trend.” In other words, having a reliable “off the shelf” solution to meet the DSP requirement in their products allows developers to concentrate on how they can differentiate (which may in fact be through how they customize and program the CEVA DSP offering – another advantage of CEVA technology being fully programmable). As a result, CEVA hopes to have more than 50% of the market for cellular baseband DSPs within the next two years, as the continued shift toward programmable IP-based technology accelerates.
A Brief History
CEVA started humbly enough 20 years ago as an R&D division of DSP Group, a maker of digital communication chips for DECT cordless solutions. In 2002, led by a group that included now CEVA CEO Gideon Wertheizer, the DSP division was spun out of DSP Group and merged with Irish IP Provider Parthus Technologies (which focused on Bluetooth and storage IP – SATA and SAS) to form ParthusCeva. Eventually the Parthus part of the name was dropped and the core group of developers took root in Herzelia, Israel, still where the majority of the company’s development takes place, although CEVA is officially headquartered in Mountain View, California.
CEO Wertheizer has maintained the core management team throughout most the company’s history. This includes Yaniv Arieli (CFO), Issachar Ohana (EVP, Sales), Menachem Stern (VP, R&D), Erez Bar-Niv (CTO) and Eran Briman (VP, Marketing). All have long track records in DSP development. Aviv Malinovitch (VP, Operations) joined in 2007. See Footnote [3] for Executive BIOs.
In CEVA’s formative days, cell phones were still a novelty and there really was no single dominant market for DSP technology, nor were the processing requirements as demanding as they are now. CEVA found its niches in areas like audio chips, hard disk drives, DVD players, and TV tuners – markets it still participates in today. The firm had early design wins at companies such as Infineon, Sony, ROHM, Samsung, Atmel, and Zoran, albeit in lower volume products. Many product developers had their own internal DSP’s at this time, and the discrete DSP market was dominated by TI, Freescale and Analog Devices – all of which had much larger sales forces and incumbent products, and CEVA struggled to find large volume wins.
Over time the cell phone market took off and new applications required both more processing performance and lower power consumption. At the same time, a new breed of fabless semiconductor companies emerged to target the opportunities in wireless, as well as other DSP-enabled applications. As the benefits and infrastructure of fabless SoC designs gained traction, CEVA began to earn some impressive design wins, not only at the high end of the market in smart phones and multimedia devices, but also in the ultra-low cost handset market (the company is particularly strong in China). CEVA has since grown to be the number one licensor of DSPs in the world, with 78% market share (source: Linley Group).
While wireless baseband processors remain its top market, CEVA also is well-entrenched in products ranging from home entertainment systems, mobile media devices, and gaming products. Emerging markets such as machine-to-machine and smart grid applications also hold strong potential for CEVA.
Focus on 4G through Software Approach
Of particular importance to CEVA is the continued evolution of wireless technology. The company has tracked well with the evolution from 2G to 3G, with products that support those various incarnations. But, now all eyes are on 4G, which promises even more bandwidth and speed in all sorts of devices for consumers – phones, tablets, games, etc.
The term 4G is generally used to refer to a range of technologies – LTE, TD-LTE, HSPA+, WiMAX. This creates a moving target for chip designers, who must also deal with a myriad of local nuances to meet specific market requirements, not to mention the need to have multiple versions of the same design to offer a variety of feature sets. A major challenge for the chip companies supplying 4G solutions is that operators’ requirements worldwide vary and depend on multiple factors including: geography, legacy network, new standards rollout plans, customer base, regulation, competition and more. About the only thing that is certain is that without a platform that is flexible, designers will spend needless time and money re-doing their work and market opportunities will be lost.
CEVA’s strategy targets this need for flexibility – along with the demanding requirements for gigahertz performance and ultra low power consumption. The fluidity in the market has led chip vendors in the wireless space to look to a programmable approach that offers multimode system support and can replace multiple dedicated hardwired blocks. This approach forms the basis for the growing move toward Software Define Radio (SDR) technologies. SDR provides a single programmable platform that can be used to support multiple air interfaces without the need for chip replacements.
Despite the need to satisfy multiple and divergent technology needs, CEVA’s support of SDR comes in the form of a single architectures on which to base all the incarnations of a provider’s design. Its CEVA-XC, introduced in 2009, is a common processor architecture that can be easily programmed to allow suppliers to target any of the major markets, each of which has its own legacy standards that need to be supported. In the next generation wireless market, for example, using traditional hardwired design methodologies would require three different processor architectures to be developed for each of the markets: Europe (legacy HSPA and GSM/GPRS), China (legacy TD-SCDMA and GSM/GPRS) and US (legacy EV-DO and CDMA). Using a more flexible but single-architecture approach simplifies future development, lowers cost and enables mass scale production by only requiring software changes to address each of the markets.
While CEVA-XC is appealing for both its programmability and performance capabilities, its ability to provide both with low power consumption may be its most attractive benefit. Until now, SDR methods faced difficulties in meeting power consumption budgets. For this reason, most of the prior SDR work was done in the military and wireless infrastructure domains, since such equipment is not battery operated. However, with handsets and other mobile devices, application power is no longer a question of efficiency but an elementary feasibility issue. A flexible and performance-oriented solution is virtually useless if it cannot meet the power needs to wireless products. CEVA-XC is built from the ground up with effective power management techniques that address both dynamic power and leakage.
The CEVA Product Line
As the heart of CEVA’s offering is its unique DSP technology, which offers both high-performance and low power advantages over its competition.
Its core DSP product is called CEVA-TeakLite and is now in its 3rd generation. This has been the company’s workhorse for many years and is delivered in a number of different versions (16-bit and 32-bit) with various performance and power consumption options. It has been a mainstay in the 2G/3G wireless handset market, as well in home entertainment, game consoles, set-top boxes, Blu-Ray DVD players and voice-over-IP products. The TeakLite family is also broadly used in the ultra-low cost handset market in emerging markets throughout Asia, Latin America and India.
For additional performance and features, particularly in the 4G application space, CEVA added the CEVA-X platform to its portfolio. Based on a VLIW architecture, this family of DSPs offers up to 1GHz of performance and additional low power options. CEVA-X DSPs are highly scalable and customizable and use CEVA’s unique instruction level parallelism to achieve their optimal performance/power advantage.
At the high end of its product line is the CEVA-XC, enabling a true software defined radio (SDR) technology, as described above. It offers the industry’s highest performance communications processor for multimode 4G terminals and infrastructure, from small femtocells and picocells all the way to microcells and macrocells. The CEVA-XC family is optimized specifically for 4G wireless technologies such as LTE, WiMAX, HSPA/+ and TD-LTE. It uses another CEVA innovation, its power scaling unit, to achieve ultra low power consumption. Because of its flexibility, the CEVA-XC is ideal for markets that are still evolving or have multiple standards. Like the other DSP offerings from CEVA, the CEVA-XC is available in a variety of configurations.
CEVA also delivers its technology in application-oriented platform solutions or subsystems. Platforms typically integrate a CEVA DSP core, hardware subsystem and application specific (e.g. video processing) software and logic. Its family of platforms spans multimedia (audio, video, image), communications (VoIP), connectivity (Bluetooth) and high-speed serial communications (SATA and SAS). CEVA IP Platforms fundamentally reduce the complexity, cost of ownership, and time-to-market for products developed utilizing the platforms. Among the popular platform it offers are its HD-Audio, mobile multimedia, VoIP, Bluetooth and a video and vision platform, the CEVA-MM3000. All come with a complete set of libraries, necessary codecs and other software to efficiently develop complete SoC solutions for these application areas.
CEVA also offers IP for high speed serial connectivity with solutions for both SAS 2.0 and SATA 3.0 applications.
Programmability and customization are key characteristics underpinning CEVA’s success. Its DSPs are supported by a robust development environment that includes software development tools, ESL models, development boards, software system drivers and RTOS.
Its CEVA-Toolbox includes a highly efficient C/C++ compiler, an advanced GUI debugger, a built in cycle accurate simulator and optimized libraries. The company invests heavily in the software and library development aspect of its products, and customer benefit from these time-saving capabilities. The development environment is built on thousands of man-years of knowledge and has been leveraged by thousands of engineers worldwide to produce more than 2.5 billion CEVA-powered chips that have shipped to date. The development tools run on Windows and Linux, and are supported by a worldwide customer service team. CEVA DSPs are further complemented by extensive algorithms and applications from CEVA and the third-party development community.
The company’s CEVAnet Partner Network extends its core IP offerings to deliver complete solutions through close working relationships with close to 50 companies in the IC design chain. Partners range from critical application software developers, to IC design tool suppliers, to chip manufacturing foundries.
CEVA Financial Performance
As a supplier of licensable IP, CEVA enjoys a relatively low overhead business model. It achieves its revenues in two forms – an upfront licensing fee for its technology, and a royalty stream once the IP is in production. Its primary customers are the IC suppliers, who integrate the CEVA technology into their chips which are then sold to systems companies/OEMs.
CEVA finished 2010 with almost $45 million in total sales, a new all-time high for the company and an increase of 17% over 2009. Significantly, revenues from royalties increased 55%. In its most recent quarterly results, CEVA showed a year over year sales increase of 36% (including a 60% jump in royalty revenues) and upped its revenue guidance for the full year 2011 to the $57-59 million range. It has a solid balance sheet, including $153 million in cash.
Summary
The success of CEVA is based on an alphabet soup of key growth factors: DSP, IP, SoC, 4G, LTE. These terms are now becoming mainstream in the world of electronics. CEVA has combined them strategically into a portfolio of solutions that address a rapidly growing market opportunity, adding technical innovation and a commitment to customer service that has earned it a strong following of customers around the world.
Its strategy is to leverage its position as the number one supplier of DSP IP solutions and grow that alongside the big market drivers fueling DSP growth overall – wireless connectivity, mobile multimedia and home entertainment. Its expertise in programmable, software based solutions help differentiate it from the competition, and its well-run business model provides a solid foundation for growth.
[1] Footnote: What is a DSP and why is it important? A DSP is a type of chip that converts analog signals to digital ones in real time. This capability is critical to products like cellular phones and mobile media conversion of analog to digital allows for data compression, which has additional advantages: faster processing speeds, elimination of background noise, reduction of required memory space, and lower power consumption. The DSP market continues to grow as the use of mobile devices proliferates throughout the world.
[2] Footnote: CEVA STOCK CHARTS
SHARE PRICE Oct 7, 2011 = $25.24
OCTOBER 7, 2011 Mkt Cap = $583.22 million
[3] Footnote: CEVA EXECUTIVE TEAM
Gideon Wertheizer, has 26 years of experience in the semiconductor and Silicon Intellectual Property (SIP) industries. He previously served as the Executive Vice President and General Manager of the DSP business unit at CEVA. Prior joining CEVA in November 2002, Mr. Wertheizer held various executive positions at DSP Group including roles as Executive VP - Strategic Business Development, Vice President for Marketing and VP of VLSI design. Mr. Wertheizer holds a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Ben Gurion University in Israel and executive MBA from Bradford University in the United Kingdom.
Yaniv Arieli has served as our CFO since May of 2005. Prior to this, Mr. Arieli served as President of US Operations and Director of Investor Relations for DSP Group. Other positions held within DSP Group include DSP Cores Licensing Divisions' Vice President of Finance, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary. Prior to joining DSP Group in 1997, Mr. Arieli served as an account manager and certified public accountant in Kesselman & Kesselman, a member of Price Waterhouse Coopers, an accounting firm. Mr. Arieli is a CPA and holds a B.A. in Accounting and Economics from Haifa University in Israel and an M.B.A. from Newport University and is also a member of the National Investor Relation Institute - niri.
Issachar Ohana serves as our Executive Vice President of World Wide sales. Prior to this, Mr. Ohana served as our Vice President of World Wide sales since the company formed through the merger of Parthus and CEVA in 2002. Previously, Mr. Ohana was with DSP Group beginning in August 1994 as a VLSI design engineer. He was appointed Project Manager of DSP Group's research and development in July 1995, Director of Core Licensing in August 1998, and Vice President-Sales of the Core Licensing Division in May 2000. Mr. Ohana holds a B.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Ben Gurion University in Israel and an MBA from University of Bradford in England.
Menachem Stern serves as our Vice President of Research & Development at CEVA. Prior to this, Mr. Stern was the Vice President for Software Development Tools and Application Solutions. Mr. Stern has worked with CEVA / Licensing Division of DSP Group since 1995 serving as the Director of Software Development Tools as well as various R&D positions within the department. Mr. Stern holds a BSc degree in Computer Science and Operations Research from the Tel-Aviv University.
Erez Bar-Niv has 16 years of experience in the semiconductor and silicon industries. Prior joining CEVA, Mr. Bar-Niv served as the Vice President of R&D at the Cores BU of DSP Group. Prior to joining DSP Group in 1998, Mr. Bar-Niv held various R&D and application positions in National Semiconductor. Mr. Bar-Niv holds a B.Sc. for electrical engineering from Tel-Aviv University in Israel and holds several US patents.
Eran Briman serves as Vice President of Marketing for CEVA. Peviously, Mr. Briman served as Senior Director of Marketing, specializing in wireless communications and multimedia applications. Prior to that, he was the Chief Architect for CEVA, with overall responsibility for the research and development of next generation DSP Cores. Before joining CEVA, he was with the DSP Group since 1995, holding different engineering and R&D management positions. Mr. Briman holds a B.Sc. in Electronic Engineering from Tel-Aviv University and an MBA from the Kellogg Business School in Northwestern University and holds several patents on DSP Technology.
Aviv Malinovitch, has served as CEVA's VP of Operations since 2007. He brings with him many years of experience in the semiconductor industry starting from 1989. Mr. Malinovitch previously served as the General Manager of Infineon's site in Israel, and before that as a Director of the engineering unit at National Semiconductor. Mr. Malinovitch holds a B.Sc. for electrical engineering from Tel Aviv University, Israel and an MBA (with honor) from The Arison School of Business, The Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. Mr. Malinovitch holds several US patents.
On June 2, 2009, several members each of the CEVA management team and the CEVA Board of Directors visited the NASDAQ Exchange in New York City, to ring the opening bell on that day. From left to right in the foreground are Sven Christer-Nilsson, Peter McManamon (Chairman), Yaniv Aireli, Gideon Wertheizer (CEO), Richard Kingston, Issachar Ohana, and Louis Silver.
S I A
by Caroline Kazmierski
On October 3, 2011 the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing US leadership in semiconductor manufacturing and design, announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors were $25.03 billion for the month of August 2011, a slight increase of 0.7% from the prior month when sales were $24.9 billion. On a year-to-date basis sales grew 2.2% year-over-year. All monthly sales numbers represent a three-month moving average.
“Sales in August were in large part driven by strong demand in tablets and PC’s,” said Brian Toohey, president, Semiconductor Industry Association. “Growth in these areas is encouraging, however lower consumer and industrial demand across a wide range of products and markets is keeping overall sales lower than expected at this point.”
A strong month-to-month increase in sales from Japan due to recovery efforts and output from fabrication facilities after the natural disaster earlier this year helped to increase semiconductor sales throughout August. Additionally, due to the compounding effect of increased semiconductor content in cars, automotive application specific semiconductors have experienced double digit growth year-to-date. In the midst of a slow and soft global economic picture, growth in the semiconductor industry is promising.
About the SIA
The Semiconductor Industry Association, SIA, is the voice of the US semiconductor industry, America's number-one export industry over the last five years and a bellwether measurement of the US economy. Semiconductor innovations form the foundation for America's $1.1 trillion dollar technology industry affecting a US workforce of nearly 6 million. Founded in 1977 by five microelectronics pioneers, SIA unites over 60 companies that account for 80% of the semiconductor production of this country. Through this coalition SIA seeks to strengthen US leadership of semiconductor design and manufacturing by working with Congress, the Administration and other key industry groups. The SIA works to encourage policies and regulations that fuel innovation, propel business and drive international competition in order to maintain a thriving semiconductor industry in the United States. Learn more at
www.sia-online.org
On October 5, 2011 the EDA Consortium (EDAC) Market Statistics Service (MSS) publically announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue generated by the EDA companies that the MSS tracks increased 17.6% for Q2 2011 to $1438.1 million, compared year-over-year to $1222.9 million in Q2 2010.
NOTE: This EDAC MSS Q2 2011 revenue total of $1438.2 million may be compared to the figure reported in the EDA WEEKLY posted on September 19, 2011:
For example, while representing only five vendors, the EDA WEEKLY G5 revenue sum nevertheless corresponds to fully 65% of the Q2 revenue reported for all the EDAC members. Moreover, the trends are similar as well: the G5 Q2 2011 revenue total was 17.2% above G5 Q2 2010; the EDAC MSS Q2 total was 17.6% above its Q1 2011 equivalent. The G5 Q2 2011 revenue declined slightly from Q1 2011, in the G5’s case -0.8%; and as reported in the next paragraph, the EDA revenue for all MSS members declined -0.6% compared to Q1 2011.
Sequentially, EDA revenue for all MSS members in Q2 2011 also decreased, in the total MSS case -0.6% compared to Q1 2011, while the four-quarters moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four quarters, increased by 16.3%.
“Second quarter 2011 results represent a significant increase in all product categories compared to the second quarter 2010, with CAE, PCB & MCM, SIP, and services all showing double digit increases,” said Dr. Wally Rhines, EDAC chair and Chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics. “Geographically, all regions realized increased revenue in Q2 2011 compared to Q2 2010, with double digit increases in the Americas, Japan, and Asia/Pacific regions."
Companies that were tracked by the EDAC MSS employed 26,721 professionals in Q2 2011, an increase of 1% compared to the 26,457 people employed in Q1 2011, and up 2.9% compared to Q2 2010.
The complete MSS report, containing detailed revenue information broken out by both categories and geographic regions, is available via subscription from the EDA Consortium.
MSS Revenue by Product Category
The largest category, Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), generated revenue of $549.8 million in Q2 2011, which represents a 19.8% increase over Q2 2010. The four-quarters moving average for CAE increased 17.3%.
IC Physical Design & Verification revenue increased to $286.9 million in Q2 2011, a 5.8% increase compared to Q2 2010. The four-quarters moving average increased 9%.
Printed Circuit Board and Multi-Chip Module (PCB & MCM) revenue of $144.9 million represents an increase of 21.7% compared to Q2 2010. The four-quarters moving average for PCB & MCM increased 17%.
Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP) MSS revenue totaled $367.7 million in Q2 2011, a 22.6% increase compared to Q2 2010. The four-quarters moving average increased 25.1%.
NOTE: The revenue total for the selected G5 IP vendors covered in the Electronics IP Commentary published August 22, 2011, stated that Q2 2011 G5 IP revenues were $291.69 million, 28.3% above Q2 2010:
MSS Revenue by Geographic Region
The Americas, Edna’s largest region, purchased $626.1 million of EDA products and services from MSS member companies in Q2 2011, an increase of 21.1% compared to Q2 2010. The four-quarters moving average for the Americas increased 17.7%.
Revenue in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) was up 8.8% in Q2 2011 compared to Q2 2010 on revenues of $246.5 million. The EMEA four-quarters moving average increased 8.4%.
Second quarter 2011 revenue from Japan increased 17.8% to $253.9 million compared to Q2 2010. The four-quarters moving average for Japan increased 11.1%.
The Asia/Pacific (APAC) region revenue increased to $311.6 million in Q2 2011, an 18.1% increase compared to the same quarter in 2010. The four-quarters moving average increased 26%.
About the EDAC MSS Report
The EDA Consortium Market Statistics Service reports members’ EDA industry revenue data quarterly and is available by annual subscription. Both public and private companies contribute data to the report. Each quarterly report is published approximately three months after quarter close. MSS report data is segmented as follows: revenue type (product licenses and maintenance, services, and SIP), application (CAE, PCB/MCM Layout, and IC Physical Design and Verification), and region (the Americas, Europe Middle East and Africa, Japan, and Asia Pacific), with many subcategories of detail provided. The report also tracks total employment of the reporting companies.
About the EDA Consortium
The EDA Consortium is the international association of companies that provide design tools and services that enable engineers to create the world’s electronic products used for communications, computer, space technology, medical, automotive, industrial equipment, and consumer electronics markets among others. For more information about the EDA Consortium, visit
www.edac.org, or to subscribe to the Market Statistics Service, call 408-287-3322 or email Contact.
The information supplied by the EDA Consortium is believed to be accurate and reliable, but the EDA Consortium assumes no responsibility for any errors that may appear in this document. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
In The News
Here are just a few news items that the writer wants to mention:
- Over the past 10 days, many articles have been published or posted about Steve Jobs and his untimely passing. Your writer saw the following article by Jason Hiner, the Editor in Chief of TechRepublic, and your EDA WEEKLY writer wanted to share the article with you in case you missed it:
“Steve Jobs' 100-year legacy: Humanizing technology”
October 10, 2011, 11:34 PM PDT
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/steve-jobs-100-year-legacy-humanizing-technology/9399?tag=nl.e101
- An article by James Temple appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle that caught this writer’s eye, that might be of interest to anyone who has worked for a private, venture-backed company, especially in roles requiring the raising of venture capital or corporate capital:
“Early payouts to startup execs a troubling trend”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/09/BUIB1LESO0.DTL
James Temple
Sunday, October 9, 2011 San Francisco Chronicle Page E1
- Did you know? Mentor Graphics purchased the non-exclusive rights to distribute as marketing collateral, hard copies of the July 25, 2011 EDA WEEKLY article, entitled,
“Back to the Future”
http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_weekly.php?articleid=980675
Contact the writer or IBSystems for details if there is an EDA WEEKLY article in which you have a similar interest.
- New Rambus Book on Signal Integrity to be released:
Juliet Niczewicz of The Hoffman Agency in Silicon Valley advises that a new Signal Integrity book authored by Rambus engineers is set to come out on October 25, 2011. The authors are Dan Oh and Chuck Yuan. Perhaps in the next EDA WEEKLY or in an upcoming Electronics IP Industry Commentary, we can tell you:
- Why they developed a book on Signal Integrity
- How some engineers can go from engineering to book authoring
- Their views of the latest trends, issues, & developments in Signal Integrity
About the Writer:
Since 1996, Dr. Russ Henke has been active as president of HENKE ASSOCIATES, a San Francisco Bay Area high-tech business & management consulting firm. The number of client companies served by Henke Associates during those years now numbers close to fifty. Engagement lengths have varied from a few weeks up to ten years and beyond.
During his previous corporate career, Henke operated sequentially on "both sides" of MCAE/MCAD and EDA, as a user and as a vendor. He's a veteran corporate executive from Cincinnati Milacron (Research Scientist), SDRC (President & COO), Schlumberger Applicon (Executive VP), Gould Electronics (President & General Manager), ATP (Chairman and CEO), and Mentor Graphics (VP & General Manager).
Henke is a Fellow of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) and served on the SME International Board of Directors. Henke was also a board member of SDRC, PDA, ATP, and the MacNeal Schwendler Corporation, and he currently serves on the board of Stottler Henke Associates, Inc.
Henke is also a member of the IEEE and a Life Fellow of ASME International. In April 2006, Dr. Henke received the 2006 Lifetime Achievement Award from the CAD Society, presented by CAD Society president Jeff Rowe at COFES2006 in Scottsdale, AZ. In February 2007, Henke became affiliated with Cyon Research's select group of experts on business and technology issues as a Senior Analyst. This Cyon Research connection aids and supplements Henke's ongoing, independent consulting practice (HENKE ASSOCIATES). Dr. Henke is also a contributing editor of the EDACafé EDA WEEKLY, and he has published EDA WEEKLY articles every four weeks since November 2009; URL's available.
Since May 2003 HENKE ASSOCIATES has also published a total of ninety-nine (99) independent COMMENTARY articles on MCAD, PLM, EDA and Electronics IP on IBSystems' MCADCafé and EDACafé.
Thanks are again extended to Mike Sottak for his assistance with the current CEVA and earlier SpringSoft articles during 2011.
We were all saddened by the loss of Steve Jobs during the week before this EDA WEEKLY article went to press, but we take courage from the words of Steve’s physician Dr. Dean Ornish, “For Steve, it was all about living life on his own terms and not wasting a moment with things he didn’t think were important. He was aware that his time on earth was limited. He wanted control of what he did with the choices that were left.”
Further information on HENKE ASSOCIATES, and URL's for past Commentaries, are available at
http://www.henkeassociates.net.
March 31, 2012 will mark the 16th Anniversary of the founding of HENKE ASSOCIATES.