DAC Special Section

Arati Prabhakar, DAC's Keynote Speaker

The DAC keynote speaker talks about the government's role in technology development.

by R.T. "Tets" Maniwa

Arati Prabhakar was appointed the tenth Director of NIST by President Clinton and took office in May 1993. As NIST director, Dr. Prabhakar oversees a staff of approximately 3,200 and a budget of nearly $1B. In addition, she chairs the committee on applications and technology of the Information Infrastructure Task Force.

Dr. Prabhakar is a senior member of the IEEE and a member of the American Physical Society. She received her BSEE from Texas Tech University (Houston, TX) and her MSEE from the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA). In 1984, she became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in applied physics from the California Institute of Technology.

Maniwa: What is the National Institute of Standards and Technology?

Prabhakar: The predecessor to NIST was the National Bureau of Standards. In 1901, when the National Bureau of Standards was formed, the mission of the laboratories was to make physical measurements. As a consequence, the emphasis was on the manufacturing and process side of industry.

NIST is involved in a variety of other programs. The Advanced Technology Program (ATP) and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) are based on partnership approaches to technology transfer. The goal of the ATP is to help to pay for broader enabling technologies on a cost-shared basis with industry partners and consortia. The government helps transfer the newly developed technologies to industry in a manner that requires profit entities to match government contributions. In this way, the government is not the one choosing the best technology, but helps to get available technologies to market. This is much better than the older technology transfer paradigm of inventing the technology, then trying to find other uses for it.

In addition, NIST is the branch of the Commerce Department responsible for the annual review and selection of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winners. The Baldrige Award is awarded to companies that demonstrate a commitment to quality by meeting stringent requirements for quality measurements and customer response.

Maniwa: What is your view of the value of the EDA industry as a value-added part of the electronics industry?

Prabhakar: If one thinks about the semiconductor part of the world, the power of the design revolution was in the separation of the design and the manufacturing issues. Now, there is some concern that the disciplines are too far separated, so the link between manufacturing and design is getting lost.

Traditionally, NIST has not been involved (to a large extent) in the circuit-design side of technology. NIST is at the starting point of learning about the circuit design areas and the EDA tools used for the newest designs.

As a part of the overall learning and development process, NIST has established an information technology laboratory to address the infrastructure for the coming information age. NIST is listening to the technical community to understand the information enterprise. This is analogous to the infrastructure enhancements of the physical, chemistry, [and] materials laboratories in creating the infrastructure in manufacturing.

Maniwa: What need is there for government support of new developments in technology?

Prabhakar: The government supports various research and developments in numerous fields. The government spends most of its money in national security and university venues. The model for public spending is still valid for many types of work, but is changing due to the nature of the economy, technology, and world-wide competition.

The government spends about $70B on R&D, spread over a large base of resources. The different missions have different funding sources in line with their overall goals. This is a logical solution to the issue of keeping focus on end-users and results. NIST has an economic objective for their funds but tries to keep in-touch with the developments in other departments in the government. They don't have a problem with the work being done by someone else as long as the efforts produce results, and the results are transferred to the economy.

In the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) [now ARPA] world of national security, there have been large changes in perspective. The electronics industry used to be very dependent upon military spending, but now defense is less than 10 percent of the total electronics industry revenue. Twenty or thirty years ago, this dependence on the military for development was OK. Now, it is at best inefficient, and more likely, it is counterproductive. The government needs to do more thinking about where the commercial industry is going.

Technology Trends Driving our 21st Century Economy
An abstract of the keynote speech for Design Automation Conference 1996 by Dr. Arati Prabhakar.

We live today in the knee in the curve of the information revolution--at the threshold of a transformation fueled by the circuits and systems that this community builds. A century ago, the idea of interchangeable parts was shaping the industrial revolution, leading to economies of scale and the vast, intricate system of customers and suppliers in our economy. At the turn of the 21st century, the cacophony of computers and communications is harmonizing into a practical, usable, interoperable information infrastructure. The information revolution, for so long the dream of engineers and scientists, is becoming the creature of the school teacher, the machine operator, the health-care provider, and the citizen. In terms of its impact on society, it is fair to say that "we ain't seen nothin' yet."

A look back at the last major technology revolution shows us how far-reaching the implications of such a change can be. Obviously, industrialization transformed the patterns of work. But with that came dramatic changes--in education, in social patterns--across our society. And much of today's societal fabric--from antitrust policy to unemployment compensation to Social Security to the regulatory system--is the legacy of that same transformation.

Another legacy of the industrial revolution is our national technology system--the very system that spawned this information revolution. Industrial support for research and development blossomed with the growth of corporations during this century, and it remains a majority-share of the U.S. R&D investment. Rooted in a post-W.W. II understanding that science and technology are vital components in national security and economic prosperity, the federal government has long invested in R&D as part of missions such as national security and health, and in a broad base of university scientific research.

But like many other social contracts, our technology system is struggling with the challenge of reinventing itself for the coming century. Vigorous global competition has driven companies to narrow and sharpen the focus of their R&D, with the result that most companies today capture more value on the R&D dollar than in the past. This also means, however, that the longer-term, broad-based R&D--the type that is so valuable to the wider community but is not often captured by the performing company--has fallen off, with dangerous long-term implications in many fields. It is no longer a valid assumption that taxpayer-supported research will automatically move into the U.S. economy, where its benefits can be reaped.

These deep-seated changes mandate a new kind of relationship among players in our technology system. Over the past few years, a number of important experiments have been launched to combine the strengths of industry, academia, and government in novel, synergistic ways. How these efforts play out will be critical to our ability to develop the new R&D paradigms we need for the next century. The opportunity for success is significant. We can lay the foundations for a new R&D culture that values partnership and teamwork along with entrepreneurial vision and vigorous competition. This culture of cooperation and competition will continue to drive the information revolution and enable us to reap its benefits.

Tets Maniwa is a technical editor for Integrated System Design.

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integrated system design  June 1995