Disaggregation of the IC and system design chain toward a specialty model has included a growing reliance on outsourcing. That has created an opportunity for developers of advanced tool suites to field design environments in which the "best of the best"--from anywhere around the globe--can be assembled for round-the-clock development of fully optimized designs.
Such an environment holds obvious appeal for OEMs haunted by the triple demons of narrowing time-to-market windows, tightening cost constraints and ever-rising performance requirements. But they must tread carefully, as new design constraints will now come to the fore. Global design efforts must factor in such variables as design security vulnerabilities; time zone and cultural differences; political and infrastructure vagaries; and the possibility that proj- ect goals, objectives and data will be "lost in translation."
