Santa Cruz, Calif. - The Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA) has generated reams of paper specifications but has been less effective in getting them adopted. Now, Michael Kaskowitz, who will be named the industry organization's new president this week, will lead a "revitalization" plan to change that.
The part-time post as VSIA president provides a "good chance" to make a change, Kaskowitz said. "VSIA has done a lot of good things for the industry, but there's been a feeling that it's too focused on what I'd call architectural review bodies, as opposed to solving the needs of the business community." Kaskowitz will remain general manager of Mentor Graphics Corp.'s Inventra intellectual property (IP) division. He takes over the VSIA president's post from Timothy O'Donnell, who left for personal reasons.
Launched with great fanfare in 1996 to provide guidance on the use and reuse of silicon IP, VSIA has grown to encompass about 130 member companies, and its development working groups (DWGs) have launched more than 20 standards, specs, white papers and taxonomies. But "we really haven't been that effective in driving the solutions out there," said Kaskowitz.
The antidote, he said, is the new revitalization plan, which focuses on the "business issues of [design] reuse." It calls for a restructuring in which VSIA will add a technical advisory board, user groups, affiliate organizations and nontechnical business committees.
"What I'm trying to do is set up the VSIA to mimic a business organization more than a standards body," Kaskowitz said.
But Gary Smith, chief EDA analyst at Gartner Dataquest, said the real problem is not with VSIA but with the third-party IP market. "Many large companies are finding it easier to build their own RTL cores than to buy from a third party," Smith said. "VSIA's problem was that they were always associated with the concept of disaggregation, which didn't work out as prophesized."
Larry Cooke, vice president of marketing for VSIA, said the organization's specifications have been used by both internal and external providers of IP. For example, Taiwan foundries TSMC and UMC each use VSIA tagging standards, he said. But the VSIA standards are "never used 100 percent" due to their "partial adoption," he said.
Kaskowitz acknowledged that VSIA has lost some of its "higher-end" members over the past couple of years, especially in the troubled telecom market. Nortel has departed, for example, but new companies have signed on, such as Intel Corp., which was not an original member.
VSIA is currently governed by its board. Under the revitalization plan, a new technical advisory board made up of "industry experts" will provide input
to the board. Then, "user groups" will convene to drive the adoption of DWG standards. For example, a user group focused on tagging standards might include representatives of major IP providers or foundries.
Cooke said that user groups will look at such issues as education, documentation and the promotion of standards. They may develop verification suites to ensure standards are properly implemented, he said.
The new plan also calls for "affiliate groups" composed of industry organizations, such as bus standard consortia, with which VSIA might choose to partner to develop tools, support or education. Finally, business committees will meet to explore nontechnical issues, such as boilerplate legal contracts for IP purchases.
Kaskowitz said that the revitalization plan has been in formation for six or seven months, and that further announcements will be forthcoming "in the next couple of months."
Kaskowitz has been involved with VSIA since its inception, when he was a vice president of engineering at Cadence Design Systems Inc., one of VSIA's founders. He has over 20 years of technology and management experience in the embedded, IP and EDA industries.
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