National Power ICs Take to the Internet : National teams with EDA house for power simulation

Electronic News, Oct 25, 1999 by Gale Morrison

National Semiconductor Corp., Santa Clara, Calif., is scoring a goal this week in the game to find a real semiconductor industry e-business model.

The power management division of National today is going live with a Web site, called power.national.com, where design engineers can specify their systems' behavior, pick a likely National part for their power supplies and have National servers simulate how that part would work in their designs. If the results are suitable, engineers are given a list of distributors who carry the part and are linked over to the purchasing Web site for that distributor.

Because the site concerns power supply ICs, which are isolated and relatively simple and much of the board design work is already done, it's a small step for semiconductor e-business. And the purchase made is for prototype parts, because engineering testing still needs to be done.

However, Webench, as National named it, accomplishes a lot. National's work with power simulation house Transim Inc. of Portland, Ore. allows for a fee-per-simulation EDA transaction in which the customer/engineer does not have to use an expensive Unix workstation. Also, the back-end link to purchasing from National distributors provides a savings in time and money. Viewlogic Systems Corp. of Marlboro, Mass. and Web distributor Questlink Inc. of San Jose last week said they are starting an integrated design and purchase service as well.

National and Transim set up the power design tool, WebSIM, on National's Sun Solaris Ultra 60 servers, so simulation time is quick. A demonstration for Electronic News was done with a laptop and a dial-up connection, and still results--garnered from the models Transim generated and the software virtual oscillocope--came back within seconds.

"It makes design mobile," said Dennis Monticelli, vice president of the power management division of National. Users can vary test conditions and perform tests such as transient response, Bode plots and finding minimum and maximum load. The site holds about 200 device models, around 40 percent of National's power catalog. Monticelli plans to have 500 devices available for simulation in six months' time.

Transim is charging $10 per simulation, with the first five free to entice users. Nels Gabbert, president and chief executive officer of Transim, which has been marketing the power simulation tools since 1991, said that quantity discounts will be offered, too.

Motorola engineers at semiconductor headquarters in Austin are behind the plan.

"I think the tool has great potential for accelerating device selection, as well as guaranteeing rapid prototyping of circuit blocks," said David Katz, a senior design engineer in the Internet and Networking Group.

Setting an Example

Power.national.com is a testbed for National, which is the largest power IC supplier, according to the market research firm Gartner Group/Dataquest. "We are serious about this. We are going to expand it," said Monticelli of the plan to replicate this model in other divisions. National also took an equity stake in Transim while the site development went on.

And it's a new business realm for Transim. "We had been struggling with how to deliver Simplis (the Transim software) on the Net," Gabbert said. "It takes a fair amount of courage to convert your shrink-wrap business to an Internet business." The vision started about a year-and-a-half ago.

Gabbert explained that committing the money, time and people to the WebSim effort was always a part of Transim's growth strategy.