VSIA melds working groups to aid analog designers

VSIA melds working groups to aid analog designers
SAN MATEO, Calif. — In the first visible results of a revitalization plan announced last month, the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance will merge three of its design working groups into one. The new group will be chaired by Raminderpal Singh, senior engineering manager at IBM Microelectronics.

Singh is chairman of VSIA's analog/mixed-signal working group, one of the three being folded into the new entity. The others are the implementation-verification group and the signal integrity DWG.

The purpose of the realignment, Singh said, is to combine the technical expertise of the three groups and focus them on a single issue: the problems faced by mainstream system-on-chip design teams integrating analog or mixed-signal circuitry into previously all-digital designs.

The industry organization said last month that it wanted to help designers solve problems by doing more than generating specifications that were not embraced by industry.

"It can start with something as innocuous as a data converter," Singh said of the problems addressed by the combined working groups. "The design team doesn't have deep analog design experience, so they license a converter from an IP intellectual-property provider. Of course, the IP comes as a GDSII file, because the IP provider wanted to make sure that it would work. But it turns out the contact placement isn't quite right for this design, or the form factor is wrong. Pretty soon the new design team is modifying the GDSII files.

"At that point, everything is undefined," Singh continued. "There is the purely legal problem of who has the right to change the files and who owns the result. Then there are the issues of who owns the problems that the changes undoubtedly created. All these things can be resolved by having a contract with the IP supplier that runs all the way through production, but that's expensive. Design teams could use help and guidance in getting through this process."

Singh's objective is to produce a streamlined, easy-to-use package of information that will improve a design team's chances of success. The package will be sent to the business side of the reformulated VSIA to be turned into a product.

"This does not mean we are shutting down the original charters of the three DWGs," Singh said. "There may be important roles for them to play as design teams move on toward 65-nanometer processes."

Rather, he noted, the merger of the groups will assist system-on-chip designers by shaping specific design guidance, and it will let VSIA take part more directly in solving their immediate problems.