SM: How did you convince TSMC that your process works and that you should get paid for it? JJ: TSMC would not endorse something like this without verifying it was sustainable.
SM: How are you charging for your software? Are you competing for EDA dollars? JJ: We recently made an announcement with TSMC, and I think this is the way we will continue to do business.
SM: Can you talk about Blaze’s value proposition and business model? JJ: We change the way a process works from an insider’s point of view. You have certain manufacturing processes with certain leakage, power, and performance characteristics. We change those to something more favorable.
In June 2008, I was in Kolkata for my aunt’s funeral. As ever, our (very large) family congregated over several meals. Whether it was birth or death, or any other family event, these meals had always acted as catalyst for our bonding, and held for us a place of supreme importance.
SM: What was your next move after Xilinx? JJ: I was eventually recruited to run a small fabless semiconductor company in the RFID space down in San Diego. My family did not follow me down there, so for a total of five years I was commuting.
SM: You have seen , I have been endlessly beating on Cadence and Synopsys on this issue. What has created this dynamic? Why is EDA so undervalued in general? JJ: When you sell software the cost of goods is almost zero. When I was working with semiconductors, we could always point back and say there
In case you are reading today, Happy July 4th. And here’s some reading to catch up on: Vision India 2020: Renaissance, Gangotri, Maya Ray, Elixar, Bioscope. Entrepreneur Case Studies: Carol Realini (Obopay), Steve Hafner (Kayak), Ramu Yalamanchi (Hi5), Francisco Martin (Strands), Samir Arora (Glam) and Jacob Jacobsson (Blaze DFM).
There is a common phrase, ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you’. Business, high tech business in particular, has a series of interdependencies which have evolved into an ecosystem. This is particularly apparent in EDA, where Intel and AMD rely on the tools provided by EDA vendors to design a chip.