Half-right, Jack?

Mark Lapedus of EE Times has a fascinating interview today (Feb. 9) with eSilicon Inc. CEO Jack Harding. The ASIC and EDA industry veteran has some sober outlooks for ASIC services based on foundries, and correctly concludes that most ASIC vendors will be fabless at the end of the recession. But his analysis only goes so far.

Like the executives in Detroit who try to argue the continued health of the Big Three, Harding doesn’t acknowledge that the NRE costs of all sub-90-nm processes make ASIC services all but unjustifiable for 95 percent of designs. This does not mean that FPGAs will take all the business once destined for gate arrays or cell-based semicustom, but it does mean that a mix of FPGAs, ASSPs, and full custom designs will all but eliminate the traditional ASIC. Only one or two Asian ASIC giants are likely to emerge from the current recession.   The problem in Harding’s vision is akin to those looking for a solution to U.S.-based manufacturing in heavy industry: We can turn up the protectionist rants and wish for the return of a world that no longer exists, or we can assume our best social-Darwinist stance and say, “Adapt or die.”