GLM at Infineon - Effective License Management for Efficient Asset Utilization
Business Session 2
Seed, Care and Harvest - Value Focused EDA
Klaus Koeppel, Director Infineon Technologies AG
Abstract
In the late 90ies Infineon started to grow faster than the competition and is now on position 6 of all semiconductor companies. Everywhere in the world we founded new Development Centers and hired new designers. These teams at around 35 locations had a strong, never ending "hunger" to a lot and often different EDA design tools. The result was a huge variety of design tools at high costs.
With the general increase of design costs and especially with the downturn of the whole industry cost saving came much more into the focus everywhere. At Infineon Global License Management (GLM) streamlines and optimizes the complete EDA tool usage worldwide. Every demand is gathered centrally and contracts are tailored to meet current usage and future expectation. Different license models (incl. Infineon’s favorite one) and their kind of operation will be presented. Conventional models need a lot of administration effort – new ideas are required to reduce this kind of workload.
Cost distribution according to usage guarantees worldwide cost awareness. Flexibility on supplier site is necessary to support a fast changing demand. Following these two principles both parties are the winner: designers with short term technology access AND vendors with easy growing of business.