Voices: VSIA President Kathy Werner on closing down an industry consortium

Industry consortia are mostly, like diamonds, forever. Kathy Werner is president of the VSIA (Virtual Socket Interface Alliance), an industry consortium devoted to streamlining the selection and transport of semiconductor IP (intellectual property). She is also IP manager at Freescale Semiconductor. EDN recently asked her why VSIA elected to shut itself down.

Why would a thriving industry organization like the VSIA vote to shut itself down?

It's not an easy decision. But the board feels that this is the best thing for the industry and for the work we have done. VSIA has pioneered a number of important tools for the IP industry. But there are, if anything, too many industry organizations, and a number of companies, working on the challenges of IP now. It will be most efficient for everyone and most effective in disseminating our results to transfer the work to other organizations.

What work in particular would you transfer?

So, what will happen to this work now?

The VSIA board will continue to operate as a steward for the work, overseeing the transfer of the projects to other organizations. This [stewardship] will include finding appropriate organizations to take up the projects, identifying corporate champions to continue driving the work, and seeding [the receiving organizations] with senior people from our working groups.

Then, you see the work going on, even after the organization formally has ended?

Oh, absolutely. There is still a need for the work. But the IP industry has matured to the point that our members don't see a need for one more umbrella organization. Right now, we are at a point where all of our projects are stable enough to transfer, and it makes sense to continue them through other organizations.

Are you looking at any specific organizations to carry on the work?

We have had discussions with people from the IEEE, and they have expressed interest in picking up the QIP effort. Other industry organizations, such as the SPIRIT [Structure for Packaging, Integrating, and Reusing IP Within Tool Flows] Consortium and the Si2 [Silicon Integration Initiative], are also obvious possibilities.

It seems that there is strong interest in the QIP Metric in China, as well.

Yes. There are senior people in China with some distinct ideas about QIP. Given the state of design practice in that country, they are interested in taking the QIP effort beyond being a metric for comparing IP offerings and making it into something like a cookbook for adopting and integrating IP into a new chip design. Some people there would like to see a government agency adopt QIP and administer IP reuse.

Are there areas of IP reuse in which you think more work is still needed?

The whole IP-transfer process—the way specific information moves from provider to user—is still being worked out. Today, it can involve a tangle of different file formats and deliverables, different for each IP vendor. Also, there's the area we call hardware-dependent software. We have not yet addressed the problem of evaluation and transfer of the low-level software that enables the semiconductor IP to function. But, as more and more IP becomes software-programmable, that software is becoming a key issue.

What do you think will happen to the people who have put so much work into VSIA programs once the transfer is complete?

Well, many of them will go on working on the projects, because they are also members of the organizations to which we will transfer the efforts. As to the management, after the board formally stops meeting, I suspect we will still talk to each other about IP issues. It's a very small industry in that way.