Hi, I'm Mike Watts from NI, and I'm
joined by Sandeep Achari from Soliton Technologies.
Thank you for having me, Mike.
Thanks for being here, Sandeep.
Now Soliton has been a trusted partner of NI
for more than two decades, and they play a crucial role
in delivering post silicon validation infrastructures
for semiconductor companies that are looking
to modernize their labs.
So Sandeep, what are some of the trends and challenges
that you've seen in the industry recently?
Sure, Mike.
As you know, all companies are in a race
to reach market faster, and on top of that,
they are adding a lot of capabilities to the DUT
and adding more software configurations
so that their DUT is more closer to the product,
to help their customers reach market faster.
And all this without compromising their test
coverage and quality.
And this trend is increasing a lot of pressure
for the validation team to be a lot more efficient.
So what they typically need is a versatile set
of tools, maybe a right level of standardization
for the engineers to do whatever experiment they want
and also quickly leverage what other validation teams are
using within the organization or even beyond.
And secondly, some organizations are
looking at integrating teams and this is primarily
happening due to mergers and acquisitions,
and even there they are looking for a good set of platforms,
tools, even practices, to efficiently integrate
these globally distributed teams and exploit
the synergy quickly.
So I would say it's a lot of significant challenges coming
in all at once.
Sure, yeah.
Those are some of the same challenges we've seen
and it can be quite challenging, indeed.
Now, obviously, there are tactics that companies can
use to combat those challenges.
Curious, what are some of the examples that you've seen work
well with some of the industry leaders?
So I would nominate three key strategies
that would help them achieve the maximum efficiency possible.
One would be automation at all phases of product lifecycle
that could provide a very powerful engineering workflow.
And the second would be adoption of intelligent data management
solutions that help engineers derive quick insights
from the data collected for time critical decisions.
And the third would be a collaboration platform
that would enable reuse within the engineering community,
and overall improving the hardware and software asset
utilization.
Sure, yeah.
Those seem all fair points, and implementing those strategies
can take time and effort but the business
benefits that come from them can be real.
So what type of business benefits
have you seen or the impact, the metrics?
Sure, Mike.
So I would first post the time by which you have
your validation data already.
So if you can have the validation data
within a few days from the first samples
that you can deliver to customers,
that's pretty good, instead of taking multiple weeks
to deliver those data.
The second would be substantial increase of our test coverage,
through increased automation of course.
And this will provide a lot of good quality data
for the customer, it builds a lot of confidence
for the customer about the device,
and the third would be a direct cost saving
that happens due to reuse.
And what we have seen is large companies
could even get over a million dollar cost saving per year
with the right kind of infrastructure
and collaboration platform.
Yeah, that sounds great, and that difference
can really mean the difference between getting to market first
and gaining market share or getting to market late
and having to play catch up.
So that's really exciting.
And that's part of the reason why NI and Soliton partnered
to write a two part article series where we touch on some
of these topics, the trends and challenges,
and some of the best practices associated
with modernizing the lab.
So we are really excited about this article series,
and what we wanted to do was to bring in all our experience
and share this knowledge to the visionary leaders who
are looking to build these kind of framework
for the engineering team.
So we are really looking forward to partner,
as you consider modernizing your lab
and making validation as your competitive advantage.
Absolutely.
So after you get done reading the article series,
the conversation doesn't stop there.
So please reach out to us, NI and Soliton, we'd
be happy to discuss ways that we can partner together to help
you as you embark on your journey
to help modernize your lab.
So thanks, and enjoy this article series.
Thank you.