How to approach physical design resourcing without blowing your burn rate
Early on every semiconductor company faces the same dilemma:
Should we build an internal physical design team, partner with specialists or both?
Tarun has seen the models up close.
Hereโs the reality:
WHEN TO PARTNER
โ
You are pre-revenue or pre-series-A
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Your differentiation is not in physical design
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You need silicon fast (customer or investor driven)
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You are on a leading node
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You cannot attract or afford tier-1 PD engineers
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You donโt have 6โ12 months to hire, train and stabilise a new team
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You want UK/EU-based leadership with scalable engineering depth
WHEN TO BUILD INHOUSE
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You have stable revenue or series B+ funding
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Your competitive moat is physical implementation
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Your tape-out cadence is predictable
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You are a high volume product company
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You are standardizing implementation flows and methodologies
THE โHYBRIDโ APPROACH
Commonly seen amongst the most successful startups.ย Its VC friendly and execution proven:
๐น 1 or 2 internal senior PD specialists to own floorplan strategy, power architecture, foundry interface etc
๐น Engage a partner for detailed implementation: PnR, Timing closure, ECOโs etc
Hybrid enables owning the knowledge and controlling the quality whilst avoiding fixed โburnโ and de-risks schedule.
ย NextGen has acted as the complete PD organisation for multiple startups โ from flow creation to constraints, synthesis, floorplanning, P&R, CTS, STA, IR-drop and final signoff.
โThey stayed focused on their core IP.
We handled the RTL-to-GDSII journey.โ
In todayโs talent market, agility matters more than ideology.