Is Your Business Socially Useless?

 Sherry Hess, Vice President of Marketing, AWR. Read profile >>

Dane Collins, our CEO, recently sent me a link to a thought-provoking blog by Umair Haque on the Harvard Business Review website. The headline boldly asks, "Is Your Business Useless?"

Before I read the first word, I knew I'd likely smile as I read through it.  Having spent nearly my entire career in high-frequency (HF) EDA, I was already willing to admit that this industry isn't overtly socially friendly.  I mean, we are largely a group of engineers whose typical stereotype is introverted, so stepping out into the spotlight to draw attention to ourselves, and, on top of that, to make a point of being "socially useful".... this was going to be good.

Nonetheless,  I read it.  Interesting points:

• Socially useless business has a cost - just in the last five years -  $12 trillion in bailout packages for socially useless banks alone 
• Socially useless business is what has created a global economy on life support 
• Socially useless business is what has created a jobless "recovery" and is why we don't have a better education, healthcare, finance, energy, transportation, or media industry

Okay Mr. Haque, how do you really feel? 

He continues, "How is it that socially useless business is to blame for this adverse affect on our society? Socially useless business is the status quo — and the status quo says: 'You don't matter. Our bottom line is the only thing that matters.' "

This is a tough dose of his reality to swallow, but does it have merit in HF EDA--or high-tech in general for that matter?  If we look at recent technology products that have succeeded, Apple's iPhone/iPod, Nintendo Wii, and Google Search all come to my mind.  Somewhere in here, these technologies and tools tapped into the value of being socially useful to the population at large.  By using these appliances, we find ourselves more productive in life or enjoying our free time more, or even using them as ways to be more social?

I doubt this is a winning strategy in and of itself (build a better mousetrap) but the way a product or service can connect with a user or consumer and make the experience personal or emotional is timeless.  Maybe today the "socially useless" tagline makes the HBR post seem more hip or current but the emotional appeal has worked for many years to build brand loyalty, from Walt Disney to Coke and Pepsi and hundreds more examples I'm not listing here.

In my own experiences within the world of EDA, I have to say that AWR is one of the few places I've worked that encourages its employees to have a sense of self and personality that isn’t constrained by the corporate logo but actually defines the brand.   Starting the blog on MWJ site was a step into the e-social fabric for me and for AWR... and an experiment that I believe has been a success for the company by enabling us to connect more with our customers and with the larger community of users out there, and to open up a dialogue to figure out how our company and its tools can improve society (our society of users).

AWR has always been customer focused. It’s the reason Joe Pekarek founded the company in the first place. Since the economy began shrinking nearly two years ago now, everyone at AWR has stepped up their commitment to the corporate mission of improving the productivity of our HF customer base --if there's one thing we understand, its that in order for AWR to be successful, our customers have to be successful.  AWR's philosophy is the polar opposite of the socially useless business. Our culture is focused on ensuring that customers know they DO matter, and that we fully understand that our bottom line depends on their success. 

Haque says that socially useless business is built on shoddy, poor economics, and like most things too good to be true, it rarely lasts for long. Socially useless businesses are living on borrowed time. The new order is "constructive capitalism." Constructive Capitalists are better businesses. They've learned how to create value that's socially useful. They are doing things that matter to people, communities, and society. 

So, the question big business and small start-ups alike should be asking themselves these days is, "How useless is my business?"

The Evolution of ACE™ (Automated Circuit Extraction)

 Dr. Mike Heimlich, Microwave & RF Marketing, AWR
 

The concept of “automated” circuit extraction (ACE) arose from a question asked at a tradeshow a few years ago that was "if you place two MLIN elements on a schematic, does the harmonic balance (HB) simulator see the coupling?"

Interesting. The defacto approach to HB simulation, and all circuit simulation for that matter, is to view each MLIN as an S-matrix.  And, for a long time, that S-matrix has been computed by taking the MLIN circuit (or rather its layout) into an EM simulator. But what the user actually was asking for and wanting was an HB simulation that takes the coupling into consideration but at the speed of circuit simulation and not at the slower pace of full-on EM extraction. 

ACE was the answer as it gave the customer a layout-driven design experience that cut through the point tool approach of EM and the resulting S-parameter hand-stitching back into the schematic.  

From another viewpoint, it was a convergence of a whole bunch of similar problems: 

• RFIC designers trying to design on eight layers of CMOS model with lossy silicon below 
• high-speed PCB designers tackling 12-layer phone boards without a ground 
• handset PA/FEM designers trying to connect four die with hand-routed inductors on a few layers of FR4 

At first blush, these problems seem different but in actuality ACE is beneficial to all. AWR’s ACE borrows from the playbook of analog parasitic extraction and makes it uniquely microwave. The advantage is that you have "on-demand" EM, how you need it and when you need it. It's ludicrous to do a full-chip EM after you lay out the first stage of a three-stage PA, but it's not so crazy to use ACE at this stage to get a feel for what your metal is doing and to capture some of the couplings that aren't in the microstrip on your schematic. You can hand-wind a spiral on a PCB and get an approximate inductance and parasitic capacitance while you are figuring out space requirements, and then get the two decimal place accuracy with EM later. 

The usefulness of ACE isn't so much a technology as it is a frequency-range and design style. If you want to forestall managing your metal until later in the design flow (after a lot of circuit simulation), then ACE is perfect.  This mostly occurs in RF-style design below 5 or 6 GHz where you are doing most of your matching with passive elements or transistors themselves. It could be 900MHz ICs or 5.8GHz WiFi router boards. Really it comes down to an RF vs. microwave design style. If you want to capture your metal on the schematic, as microwave designers do, then ACE is good for getting the extra couplings as they are developing. But you would use ACE a lot more with a RF-style design. And of course, you always want to do a final, full-up EM with AXIEM!

ACE always...why? If you only EM everything you are typically waiting too long into the design flow and spending too much time with an EM solver to look at sensitivities of simple couplings. ACE enables you to insert those couplings into your design as models and then play with them along the lines of their "natural parameterization."  What is "natural parameterization?" For our coupling case, for example, if you have two broadside-coupled lines,  the "natural" way to represent that as a "parameterization" is by the distance separating the edges of the parallel lines. As we make the distance smaller, the coupling goes up and as we make it larger, the coupling goes down.  Now, in an EM solver, this means an awful lot of huffing and puffing: move a line, do an EM, repeat, rinse, and dry.  In the ACE world, once ACE finds the couplings for you, you have a model that you can then tie to a parameter and study that parameter by TUNING! 

For more information on the capabilities of ACE, check out the videos on AWR.TV, or download the ACE White Paper.

State of the Industry

 Dane Collins, CEO of AWR. Read profile >>
 

I recently contributed my opinion on the state of the industry in an editorial piece for Microwave Product Digest at the end of last year. I discussed the impact of the economic crisis on the EDA market in general and AWR’s bottom line in particular. (Read full interview here >>)

Calendar year 2008 was a record one for AWR in both sales and earnings and despite the worsening economic crisis over this past year, calendar year 2009 was also financially successful and record-setting for AWR once again. One reason I see for our continued success throughout this on-going troubling economic climate is quite simply that we’ve not lost touch with our core philosophy: delivering value and maintaining relationships and building trust with our customers.

Business experts will tell you that in today’s climate, customer trust is a huge issue and when gained results in a competitive advantage. Thankfully over the past decade plus, our customers know they can trust us and they know from experience that we don’t just sell them a product, we sell them improved productivity, faster time-to-market, more bang for the buck. They know we are committed to the microwave and RF market and to their success and will be right beside them delivering the best possible customer service and support. We’ve worked hard to build a solid foundation of trust and a strong value proposition with our customer base over the years, and in hard times like these we’re seeing the rewards.

What does 2010 look like? At AWR, I see there are plenty of opportunities in both the commercial and military sectors from the device level through complete systems that will drive growth this year. Thanks to our thirst for all things wireless, this industry is faring far better than most sectors of the economy, and defense systems continue to increase their RF and microwave content. As a result, it is safe to project that the coming year will be one of positive growth for companies serving both markets and certainly for AWR.