siliconindia | |March 201519 Debajyoti Palwireless as well. Ubiquitous availability of gigabit/sec ser-vice to a few wireless users or tens of megabits/sec to thou-sands of wireless broadband users will never happen with-out the availability of proper backhaul; one way to achieve this would be by feeding the Pico cells with fiber or with G.fast or with bonded G.fast. So in some sense the success of wireless depends on wireline ultra-broadband.Higher Capital, Hard to Come ByThe biggest challenge anyone faces is the amount of capital needed to develop a complex IC chip today. Given that just a single 16nm tape-out of any reasonably complex device costs several million dollars, it is increasingly getting difficult for startups or even smaller semiconductor companies to be able to compete with the larger companies. Often referred to as "Cost of ASIC" problem that explains how expensive it has become to develop custom complex ASICs today using deep sub-micron technology, the industry has yet to come up with a solution for this. A major concern of the industry is the worry about ROI. However, there may be hope, as some folks may be thinking of alternatives to full custom ASICs to deal with the enormous cost of developing these chips today. One of the startups, Wave Semiconductor of Campbell, CA is focusing solely on solving the "High Cost ASIC" problem and has taken on this problem head on.On a different note, not every chip may have to use the latest process geometry, and older fab processes/geometries may just be fine for those applications at hand. Also many analog chips or MEMs do not use expensive processes. IoT devices or sensors largely fall in this category, and hence we may see a real growth opportunity for semiconductor startups in this arena going forward.There are a cou-ple of challenges that have been very prominent lately and which many semiconductor peers would agree to:(a) The products we develop require a lot of R&D. Developing and abiding by complex technologies is quite a challenge, and there is lack of monetary encouragement for us. The challenge is to get paid "well" or even "fairly" for the value of the complex technology and products we bring to the table and still make money and be profitable.(b) How to attract investments; inherently we have long cycles for return on investment, unlike in the software in-dustry.(c) A vision for success; reinventing the company to diver-sify into new or adjacent markets by leveraging our core competency and augmenting it appropriately with new tal-ent.Encouraging Multiple Ways I always encourage having a two-way approach for solving a specific challenging task. Through that we can compare different solutions and then pick the one that best serves our needs. I value intellectual property. So I encourage people to develop new ideas, to emphasize and the strategic areas of interest for the company as far as intellectual property is concerned­which, if found to be novel would lead to the filing of provisional patents. We also recognize our folks for filing patents, as well as for when the patent is granted in various ways. This motivates people to think outside the box, and to invent and generate intellectual property that is valuable for us.Motivates people to think outside the box, and to invent and generate intellectual property that is valuable for us"
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