Guest Editor's Introduction: Examples of Management Decision Criteria

Consumer application chips are the technology drivers today. Their design and test require different types of optimizations to address, on the one hand, the technology challenges, and on the other, very high volume production. This will necessitate adopting emerging solutions to meet such requirements. Optimizing for high-volume production, low power, and shrinking sizes necessitates adequate trade-off analysis, along with technical and business decision making by management. Also, moving to new semiconductor technology nodes, such as 45 nm and 32 nm, can significantly affect the choices of suppliers. This special issue discusses these requirements and demonstrates corresponding management decision criteria to make the right choices from a pool of alternate options for flows, methodologies, tools, and IP blocks.