EE Solutions aggressively provides the IC Design Services to customers with the technology from North America, the supply chain in Taiwan and the market in Mainland China.

April 2, 2003

With the rapid advance of the semiconductor manufacturing process into .18u designs and beyond, completing the design on time becomes increasingly difficult, especially with the shortage of experienced designers. The Design Services company then becomes the necessary alternative with the focus on providing solutions to fabless companies.

EE Solutions CEO Jim Su indicates that with the quick development of IC design methodology, the tool and methodology used for .35u design cannot be used for deep submicron designs. This is due mainly to chip complexity and the internal interconnecting wires of the deep submicron designs. For these reasons, EE Solutions is the industry’s forerunner providing design methodology with well-proven Deep Submicron design technology to ensure the successful implementation of their customers’ designs.

For instance, there are many IPs needed to design the SoC chip, which takes a tremendous effort to search and verify the correct IP. This increases the cost to IC fabless companies in addition to the costs of employing talented designers, purchasing EDA tools, etc.

Jim said, “the IC design house should invest their limited resources into marketing and product innovation to get the best benefit. In order to lower the cost and gain market share with faster Time to Market, the fabless company should outsource the tasks such as IC front-end and backend design, IP development/integration and cost/logistics control to the experienced Design Services companies.”

A Design Services company can provide a lower cost and faster product development time. Lower cost and faster product development time becomes increasingly important as product price margins gradually decline.

Although the Taiwan foundry industry is moving to .13u and below, most Taiwan fabless companies are mainly making .25u products. Jim Su indicates there are many difficult issues for the .18u designs, which do not exist in the .25u designs, and it will endanger the product development progress if the fabless companies do not try to find the solution now. Because there is basically no Deep Submicron designer available in Taiwan, Jim believes the best solution is to utilize the experienced talent from the US.

Since the talents in US are relatively expensive and difficult to recruit, it is not easy for the fabless companies to solve this problem by themselves. Therefore, the best solution is to partner with a design services company with Deep Submicron design experience and talent from US.

In the past, most IC designs came from the US but now it’s gradually changing. The high manpower cost in US helps Taiwan fabless companies gain market share using local talent. Also having the complete foundry supply chain further assists in the success of Taiwan fabless companies.

Although there is a cost advantage for Taiwan in competing with US, Taiwan is facing strong competition from China with even lower cost and abundant locally trained designers. Fortunately, there is still a gap in design capability between Taiwan and China but the gap is definitely shrinking every year.

Jim firmly believes the Taiwan IC fabless companies cannot hang onto the .25u designs arena, which will face strong competition from China. They must boost their design capability and move into Deep Submicron design as soon as possible. In order to get away from the inevitable competition from China, Taiwan fabless companies must utilize the Design Services companies’ capability and experience to become a strong player in the Deep Submicron Design market.

Currently, China imports 90% of their semiconductors so it’s a huge market for Taiwan fabless companies. With the strong push from the Chinese government, soon there will be many startup fabless companies emerge in China. Also the protective policy of China officials and the low cost of labor, it will definitely be a big threat to Taiwan fabless companies competing in the same .35u market.

Compared with other Design Services providers, Jim believes EE Solutions has the edge on understanding and utilizing the different advantages of the US, Taiwan and China. At this moment, the US is leading in technology. Taiwan has the advantage of having low cost manufacturing and China has a potentially large market.

EE Solutions has established offices in Hsinchu, Taipai, and the US and is setting up new offices in Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Dalian. EE Solutions also has many partners in Singapore, Korea, and India. With this setup, EE Solutions provides strong connections and experience utilizing the technology from US and manufacturing in Taiwan to meet the market demand in China.

EE Solutions IC design services include the analog/mixed- signal design, signal integrity, and physical synthesis. In addition, EE Solutions also represents many well-known products of EDA vendors. Jim said, through EE Solutions use of EDA tools in their design service, EE Solutions knows what their customers need for EDA tools. Having this actual working experience, EE Solutions is able to provide superior technical support to its customers. At the present time EE Solutions represents EDA technology products from 0-In, Apache, Q-Design, CoWare, InnoLogic, etc.