Doing Moore with Less

By _Numetrics Insights Blog

April 22, 2010

It’s a common refrain, and I heard it this week at the IEEE VLSI Test Symposium in Santa Cruz: Moore’s Law is increasingly difficult to obey. We see evidence of this perception everywhere:

• Manufacturing costs are soaring: A fab that cost $2.5 billion to construction at 90 nm now costs $6 billion at the 22 nm node. So companies are selling off their fabs and losing what was once a huge competitive differentiation for them. Their primary differentiation is increasing their product-development capability.
• System-on-Chip (SOC) development costs run anywhere from $50 million to $100 million per project. A dwindling number of markets can support the ROI that type of investment demands.

This increasing risk has significantly cooled VC investment in our industry. In 2000, venture capitalists invested nearly $4 billion in semiconductor companies; last year, it was $771 million.

This means that to be successful in 2010 and beyond, semiconductor companies must “do Moore” with less. That requires a focus on product-development capability. How do you transform your product-development organization into a world-class team?

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