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Design For Cost

In 1789, Benjamin Franklin, who achieved the fame and stature of President of the United States without ever having to actually serve in that capacity, famously observed, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." Today, more than 200 years later, it appears that one more item can be appended to Franklin's list of certainties: Cost, always a key consideration in IC design, has become increasingly important, increasingly earlier in the IC design flow.

While this statement might seem like a prima facie observation to many industry insiders, careful analysis demonstrates that the most stunning aspect of cost in the design flow is how long cost has remained a simple business/marketing problem. On some nebulous date after the turn of this century, cost crossed over into the realm of engineering problems, where it will certainly remain and where it certainly belongs.

In the early 2000s, a number of seemingly unrelated events converged with a series of subtle trends, forcing cost to cross an imaginary line. This line separated the business side, where cost had resided for decades as an inevitable, yet largely unpredictable byproduct, or output of the design flow, from the engineering side where cost can now exist quite comfortably as a front-loaded and accurately predictable input.

The confluence of events and attitudes at the dawn of the 21st century caused the tech bubble – representing a high watermark for the IC design industry – to burst, rather unceremoniously. The resulting slump in the American economy forced corporations to explore other global markets. Technology companies previously engaged in marketing their performance and feature-driven consumer electronics goods (i.e., cellular phones, laptops, PDAs) to North America and Europe, found themselves scrambling to reengineer these products to meet the lower price points dictated by rapidly expanding, high-growth markets, such as China and India.

Business leaders found...