EES Meets Technology and IP Challenges

China EE Times - November 2, 2005

As the nation’s semiconductor industry’s wafer, packaging and testing capabilities become more advanced, China’s IC design industry has a lot of room to grow. But in light of costs, resources, fab capacity, time-to-market and various other pressures, the IC design industries’ specialization has become more pronounced, which brought about design services companies like VeriSilicon, IPCore Technologies and EES. More complicated design requirements created the growth opportunity for design services, but IC design’s increasing complexity also forces IC design services companies to face greater challenges daily. Accordingly, EES’ President Jim Su believes that “staying abreast of modern technology and acquiring verified IP are the two biggest challenges facing IC design services companies.”

Since entering the IC design services industry in 1999, EES’ primary business has been providing IC design services for fabless IC design companies and system houses, including back-end design and turnkey services, such as RTL coding, synthesis, layout, packaging, testing and technology ranging from 0.5 um to 0.13 um. Communications companies comprise EES’ primary customer base. EES has expanded its business into consumer electronics products like digital entertainment, HDTV, setup box, home multimedia, DVD and DVT and is targeting wireless communications and digital entertainment.

“Possession of verified IP is extremely important to the IC design services industry; only if each and every IP is verified can a company quickly mass produce products,” said Su. EES has already begun designing many customized IP, such as codeflow D-SCODEC IP, high resolution ADC IP and TV encoding and decoding while at the same time vigorously partnering with other professional IP companies to develop new IP to meet market needs. Regarding specs, Su expressed that EES will continuously adjust its product specs based on market needs and technological evolution.

Staying abreast of technology is also extremely important to the IC design industry. To progress technology to the 90 nm, 12-inch wafer and even 65 nm levels all require advanced and precise design flows. This year, EES and China’s HeJian Technology worked together and developed a deep sub-micron 0.18 um design flow template to allow more design companies to adapt new technologies and raise design standards. EES’ greatest advantage is its ability to shorten the design flow cycle and time-to-market.This was made possible by matching advanced and precise design flows and using either their own silicon verified IP or its partners’ IP for back-end design. Su mentioned that, in the past few years, professionals returning from overseas mostly formed companies focusing on front-end design. Thus, back-end design generally requires support from IC design companies. Back-end design and turnkey solutions happen to be EES’ specialties. EES is already in the middle of designing nano-technology design flows.

Concerning the competition between IC design services companies and IDM companies, Su believes that the mere existence of IC design services is the result of specialization. They both have their strengths. IDM companies’ strength lies in having thorough IP categories and fab capacity as they own a lot of the products and their IP all passed verification. Their weak point lies in lacking flexibility in production selection because IDM companies must use their own equipments and fabs. IC design services companies may not be able to compare to IDM companies in the amount of IP they own, but IC design services companies usually have their own specialized IP areas and high-quality IP, which IDM companies lack. At the same time, IC design services companies can freely choose different fabs, packaging and testing companies to satisfy the various design and cost needs from customers and to flexibly utilize various production resources. Therefore, Su believes that as long as IP design services companies can acquire quality and specialized IP and leverage their other advantages, they can still acquire market share in this highly segmented market.

It’s said that mainland Chinese customers are EES’ most important customers, accounting for roughly half of its customer base. EES plans to setup more offices and R&D centers in the coming years in order to provide more timely and complete services to local customers. Su said that 2006 is a year to look forward to for all industries. Although digital TV, portable TV, MP3, PMP and wireless communications are all IC design services’ big business opportunities, for EES, its biggest business opportunities lie in providing second source IC design services to system houses.