A recent trip to Asia renewed my confidence that the electronics industry is recovering. We can attribute this to the insatiable demand for consumer electronics and the second generation of digital convergence, or what I call the third digital wave in electronics. The first was the analog wave that began in 1970 that swept in TV and VCRs. The first digital wave broke in 1980 and ushered in the PC. The second digital wave began in 1990 with digital consumer products and networks.

During the next five years, don't expect a killer app in this third wave. Instead, the industry is maturing. And so, we're seeing new applications for electronics products, including HDTV, but the real emphasis is on adding functionality and delivering well-integrated products at a reasonable price. After all, tech-savvy users shouldn't be the only ones who know how to program a VCR.

The industry's collective goal is the proper design, delivery and branding of our products because the time to adoption is short, and consumers are fickle. All of which conspires for an efficient means of designing systems on chip (SoCs). The industry just can't design custom logic for the entire chip because it's too costly. Recent figures suggest the R&D investment in just 10 custom chips could be as much as $300 million. Even in a healthy economy, that's a risky investment.

Efficient SoC design means a vibrant intellectual property model, where IP vendors aren't just providing RTL code. It means addressing the design challenges of standard chip interfaces. While we've been waiting for a rebound, project teams have been adding interfaces around the processor core of older SoC designs. They've increased functionality, but created new verification problems. Verification continues to occupy 60 to 80 percent of the design cycle, and a staggering 43 percent of respins are due to inadequate functional verification.

A robust chip interface enabler with a strong verification IP architecture is the answer.

Sanjay Srivastava, President and Chief Executive Officer, Denali Software Inc., Palo Alto, Calif.