Industry Expert Blogs

Who is really your customer? Competitor? Well-known EDA analyst Gary Smith forecasts the future.

Gary Smith began his annual pre-DAC overview by reminding his audience that in the world of system design (see Figure 1), the OEM was not necessarily a “manufacturer”. In today’s dynamic semiconductor world, the OEM can range from a company buying the platform design, manufacturing the system-on-chip (SoC) at a foundry, wrapping plastic around it and taking it to market (e.g., low end cell phones), to a vertically integrated company that outsources manufacturing (e.g., high-end Apple cell phones).

“With such a range of possible OEM scenarios, you need to understand who is your customer and who is your competitor,” explained Smith. “And the relationships almost change day by day. The key is to develop an ecosystem as stable as ARM’s in this changing world of relationship.”

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