BRIAN SANTO: I’m Brian Santo, EE Times Editor in Chief, and you're listening to EETimes on Air. This is your Briefing for the week ending June 14th.
我是EE Times主编Brian Santo，你正在收听的是EETimes全球联播。这是截至6月14日的一周热点新闻概要。
Today we’ll be talking about…
今天我们要谈的是......
RISC-V, a free and open processor architecture. We examine the potentially profound consequences RISC-V might have for the smartphone market…
RISC-V：这种免费开放的处理器架构可能给智能手机市场带来的深远影响......
We’ll also be talking about engineering education. We’ve heard about the need for STEM education, but the required skillset for engineering has expanded in unexpected ways.
STEAM：我们还将谈论工程教育。我们已经知道STEM教育的必要性，但是工程所需的技能组合早已超出我们的想象。
We’ve also got a report on chiplets. With Moore’s Law coming to an end, one way to compensate might be to create a system whereby manufacturers can assemble a microprocessor from a set of processor subsystems-- chiplets.
Chiplet：我们有一个关于小芯片组(chiplet)的报告。随着摩尔定律的终结，一种弥补的方法可能是创建一个系统，让制造商从一组处理器子系统(即chiplet)来组装微处理器。
Articles Discussed in This Episode:
本期节目涉及的新闻文章：
Qualcomm Takes Stake in SiFive 高通投资SiFive
Engineering Jobs & Engineering Education 工程类职位与工程教育
Chiplet Effort Plays First Proposals Chiplet开放标准的第一次提案出台
Andes Technology Launches FreeStart to Boost RISC-V Adoption 晶心科技推出FreeStart项目以提升RISC-V普及率
First up, RISC-V. Qualcomm is a leading supplier of the chips that go into smartphones. European correspondent Nitin Dahad wrote a story about Qualcomm investing in SiFive, a hard-charging little start-up that has expertise in RISC-V technology. International editor Junko Yoshida caught up with Nitin to discuss what RISC-V is and what Qualcomm’s investment in SiFive might portend.
首先来谈谈RISC-V。高通公司是智能手机芯片的领先供应商。EETimes欧洲通讯记者Nitin Dahad撰写了一篇关于高通投资RISC-V技术初创公司SiFive的文章。我们的国际主编Junko Yoshida与Nitin一起讨论RISC-V究竟是什么，以及高通对SiFive的投资可能预示着什么。
JUNKO YOSHIDA: Hi Nitin! How are you?
NITIN DAHAD: I'm fine, thank you. I've just arrived in Zurich.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: What’s happening in Zurich?
NITIN DAHAD: So the RISC-V workshop is happening here in Zurich. So I've decided for the first time to attend one of these. So I'm going to be attending it over the next couple of days.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: Excellent. All right, so I think I've come to the right person to ask this question, because I think last Friday you filed a story about SiFive getting Qualcomm's investment. So Qualcomm’s investment in SiFive, what does it tell us about the state of RISC-V, and more importantly, about SiFive?
NITIN DAHAD: I think it means RISC-V is coming of age. I had a conversation at Computex in which a major chip industry investor was asking about the merits of RISC-V and whether it really can be deployed more widely. What I think this investment from Qualcomm now does is, it's publicly saying-- well, actually, Qualcomm did publicly say it wants to exploit the full potential of the RISC-V architecture in wireless and mobile. And I think a key thing for the RISC-V architecture.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: Right, okay. So this is my opinion, but it seems like Naveed Sherwani, president and CEO of SiFive, he is a tireless promoter of his own business. Nothing wrong with it. All the more power to him. But in your story, you quoted him claiming SiFive having just achieved 101 design wins. I read in LinkedIn today he was talking about the 102nd design win he is onto or something like that. Is SiFive a chip company or an IP company? I'm a little confused.
NITIN DAHAD: Just from what I remember from my days at ARC, I think you can sort of put the numbers out. A design win can mean it's very advanced, it might be very early stage or it might be just some concept.
So anyway, coming back to your question. This is where the perception seems to flip-flop. Some people tell me SiFive is pushing IP, and Naveed has been talking about both.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: Exactly.
NITIN DAHAD: But when I most recently spoke to him in Cambridge in the UK, he categorically told me he wants to be a silicon company. He told me they’ll do $100m US dollars in revenue this year, and 75% of that will come from silicon and 25% from IP licensing.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: Wow. I did not think that. That's interesting. So I know that Naveed doesn’t mince his words when he talks about current IP licensing models out there on the market today. What problems is he seeing in it, and what promises is he making to fix that problem?
NITIN DAHAD: His core message is you can do a chip very quickly. He says the reason you can't at the moment is it takes too long to negotiate IP license contracts, say with multiple vendors if you've got a chip with multiple IP blocks. Also if a designer needs to make changes, then it can often require re-negotiation of the license or licenses.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: Right.
NITIN DAHAD: He claims SiFive’s model addresses this head on, with all the IP its IP partners residing within the templates they provide in the Cloud. So the designer doesn’t need to negotiate licenses in the first place with multiple IP vendors. So that sort of accelerates his ability to do the chip.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: I see. I'm just wondering: Am I the only one thinking that RISC-V Consortium is kind of overshadowed by SiFive, or is SiFive stealing all the thunder from RISC-V? What do you think? What's your take?
NITIN DAHAD: It's very interesting, and I'm going to take it to another level. SiFive is certainly stealing all the limelight, spending a lot of its $125 million US or so that investors have put into it on its traveling roadshow in almost every corner of the world (over 50 plus events).
I am sure the investors are happy with this profile building. This in turn raises its valuation for an exit. That’s the norm with companies that raise a lot of money. Look at Graphcore in the UK. Companies like this, they raise a lot of money looking for an accelerated path to exit.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: Yeah.
NITIN DAHAD: But in RISC-V, I think there are many other emerging vendors, and I think we’ll see them also raising money and profile on the back of this SiFive funding.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: Yeah.
NITIN DAHAD: I hope to meet a few at the RISC-V workshop here in Zurich, Switzerland this week.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: All right. So we look forward to your follow-up stories. Well thanks for your time, Nitin.
NITIN DAHAD: Thank you.
BRIAN SANTO: After recording the segment you just heard, Nitin wrote another story on a company called Andes Technology, one of the RISC-V specialists offering engineers a way to try RISC-V development for free. Read it on eetimes.com.
The world needs more engineers. We expected that would include more IC designers, but we were surprised. This week we presented a set of articles that examine Engineering Employment and Engineering Education. Our main article finds out that in some categories, the electronics industry needs fewer design engineers, not more.
What does that mean for the engineering profession moving forward?
We’ve been told that we need a laser focus on STEM skills: science, technology, engineering and math. But as we investigated, we discovered the electronics industry needs a much wider variety of skills, including communications skills, collaboration skills, business skills, and subject matter expertise. And all of that is beginning to get integrated into engineering programs.
George Leopold is our editor based in Washington DC. His contribution to our Employment and Education Special Project was on that very subject, so we invited him on for a chat.
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