While it is clear the industry organizations are searching for relevance and efficiency along with the rest of the industry, the solutions are not as clear as we once thought they were. This article will explore some of the myths of standards creation in light of the changing demands of the IC industry.

One such myth is that standards have value, while "best practices" have little value. Actually, in the early days of IC design reuse, "best practices" specifications such as VSIA's Architecture Document and the Reuse Methodology Manual became some of the most widely adapted documents by the IC industry. But they have also been some of the least appreciated, because most company-internal "best practices" guides do not adequately reference these and other documents, from which most of their content was derived.

Actually, "best practices" specifications have served to converge the industry toward generally common, but individually customized, solutions, and while this provides most of the convergence toward common productivity improving processes, subsequent improvements can only be achieved by agreeing on supported industry standards.

While the industry has converged to a point where there's a need for supported adoptable standards, there is still a growing need for adoptable "best practices" that are concrete enough to answer today's burning question: "What are you giving me for my membership dollar?" Clearly, the proliferation of the single supported standard organizations was in part a response to this change, but standard measures for "best practices" are also necessary to improve the quality of IC design.

This leads to another high tech myth: Single-standard organizations are the most efficient at providing solutions for the industry, because they are focused and dedicated to a single task. This opinion has been so prevalent that today we have hundreds of high tech industry organizations, each dedicated to a specific task, many of which have overlapping objectives.

As a result, when they look at the resource and membership costs together, many of the large IC companies find they are spending millions of dollars per year to support all these standards organizations — a cost they are questioning in today's business environment. Just as these companies are experiencing increased efficiency through consolidation in their industry, there is a strong case for streamlined, permanent umbrella industry organizations because of their efficiencies of scale and staying power.

The IEEE is the most notable of the umbrella type of organization, but the ongoing support for their standards has and will continue to be individually member driven. Clearly the industry needs more than just a repository for its standards. If consolidation is to occur without losing the valuable standards development already completed by the industry, umbrella type standards organizations must also be prepared to support their acquired standards.

Another growing myth is closed standards development will result in quicker development of industry adoptable standards. Clearly, this opinion is in part due to the excruciatingly long gestation time of most standards, and like most myths, it is partially true. In fact most standards organizations take years to accomplish what many companies can individually accomplish in months, but the problem is not the same. Yes, a standard can be created and supported with tools by one or a few companies in a relatively short time, but if those companies together don't constitute most of the market, the closed standard is likely to be met with a great deal of industry resistance.

The best of both worlds is to create an initial seed standard in a closed manner, open it for buy in by the industry at large, continue with closed development of tools and materials to support the standard, and eventually opening them up to insure industry adoption of the standard. By managing the closed development and open industry participation, standards organizations can minimize both the development time and the industry rejection of the standard.

Like the IC business itself, the world of industry organizations is changing. Efficiency through better practices and concrete, rather than fuzzy, benefits have always dominated business, particularly in periods of economic contraction, and this is also true for industry organizations. Like their members, IC industry organizations will likely have to both improve their administrative procedures and merge to survive.

The Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA) has recognized this trend and is changing to more efficiently serve the IC industry and its members. We are not here to solve one or two issues. Through our strong membership base we are able to identify new trends and new issues that must be resolved. We standardized our legal agreements and converted to a web based support model to streamline our administration. We initiated our new Adoption Group program, a flexible arrangement in which VSIA provides umbrella administrative support to relatively independent groups that "productize" standards for the mutual benefit of themselves and the industry.

We are answering the question; "What will I get for my VSIA membership dollars?" Can the same be said for other industry organizations out there?

Larry Cooke (lhcooke@vsi.org) is VP of Business Development for VSIA. While in his previous role at Toshiba he helped found VSIA, and chaired its On-Chip Bus Development Working Group (DWG).