[Music]
I'm Ron Nersesian,
the President, CEO, and Chairman of
Keysight Technologies.
Today, I want to talk about the major
design trends and challenges
that our customers are facing every day
and we, as a company, are also facing.
I'll then highlight how advanced
solutions and especially software, are
utilized to address these challenges. The
pace of technology innovation continues
to accelerate.
Cybersecurity, 5G and 6G communications,
autonomous and electric vehicles, quantum
computing, artificial intelligence,
robotic process automation, and digital
twins or advanced simulation
technologies, have been extremely key
to moving forward in this technology
world.
And there has been breakthroughs in each
of those areas as Keysight is involved
in all of those except for just one.
And with the disruption caused by the
Covid-19 pandemic over the last year and
a half,
the pace of technology development and
adoption has only sped up.
At the same time, numerous applications
of new and emerging technologies offer
exciting and limitless possibilities.
Whether it's
5G, 6G, quantum, artificial intelligence --
these technology drivers are causing
nearly every company to embrace
transformation of some sort while also
presenting significant challenges for
today's design engineers and innovators.
There are four key challenges that
nearly every innovator faces today;
you could call them the four horsemen of
design challenges,
and they are:
complexity,
time,
dynamic requirements,
and productivity.
Let's take a look into each of these
areas a bit more.
At Keysight, we have heard from customers
that they continue to face exponentially
increasing technological complexity. The
issue of integration complexity beyond
integrated circuits themselves and into
electronic sub-assemblies, modules, and
systems is one that many engineers are
wrestling with today.
Increasing complexity is especially
pronounced for software use to integrate
control and link together everything
digital.
The scale of complexity can be
understood by considering that the
autonomous vehicle has nearly 100
million lines of software source code.
The design software that you are using
today is likely nearly as complex. Next
is time,
and there is never enough time.
We are hearing from our customers,
electronic design customers, that they
are dealing with two times the
accelerated design cycles and on top of
that, the competition is global.
It's 24 hours a day, seven days a week,
365 days a year,
and everything is digitally connected.
Design teams from around the world pass
back code
from east to west, and west to east in
order to make sure that they can keep
the development process moving
throughout the day and night.
What used to be a multi-year hardware
design cycle
now must happen in less than a year even
on the most complex designs.
The pace expected by customers continues
to accelerate and we must match that
pace.
With increasingly digital transformation,
especially around the usage of software
and reprogrammable logic, the faster pace
has accelerated to weekly, daily, and in
some cases, hourly updates.
Remember when that design cycle could
last years?
That seems so long ago.
Next, we have dynamic requirements,
and as the pace of design increases,
changing requirements are also
increasing.
Moving early and fast often means some
details are being pinned down over time
versus waiting for everything to be 100
percent locked down at the outset.
The increasing use of programmable and
software technologies in many designs is
helping to provide post-release
flexibility in addressing changing
requirements.
This is another case where technology
can be viewed as both a blessing
and a curse.
Improved communication technologies and
globalization of supply chains are
accelerating the pace and creating
dynamic requirements.
In addition, the pandemic has accelerated
adoption of digital engagement
technologies.
More companies are finding that being a
first mover in a technology or industry
accelerates the discovery and retention
of customer value, thus leading to a
sustained profit advantage for first
movers.
As we all know,
the value that you create is a
perishable commodity that perishes over
time.
Being there first helps you gain market
share,
revenue,
and profitability
that funds future R & D.
So that the faster that you can go
can generate more R & D dollars for you to
accelerate and get even further ahead on
the next cycle.
Our last challenge is productivity.
Highly-skilled design resources are
costly and time-consuming to develop and
the demand outpaces the limited supply.
This has led to what has been termed a
design productivity gap in high-tech
industries that are faced with growing
complexity challenges and a shortage of
skilled design talent.
This places a large burden on
exponentially increasing productivity
by 2x
every five years or ideally, even faster.
These challenges -- complexity, time, dynamic
requirements, and productivity are
something almost all of us are dealing
with and they most likely sound very
familiar to all of you.
So how can we overcome the four horsemen
of design challenges and keep innovation
going strong? First there are end-to-end
solutions which are constructed for
specific design and validation
challenges. These solutions go well
beyond point products in the technical
and business benefits they can bring to
customers.
Companies like Keysight provide
end-to-end solutions that combine
hardware, software, and people or services
into full solutions to accelerate design
workflows and help address complexity
and productivity challenges. In addition
to more sophisticated solutions, this
approach often includes a deeply engaged
partnership between solution providers
and the design innovators who are
pushing the limits of what is
possible. The extensive use of software
and digital technologies that are
continuously updated helps ensure the
end-to-end solutions are optimized for
dynamically changing requirements.
Next is intelligent technologies which
can help a lot. This is an area where
Keysight is investing into predictive
analytics and intelligent automation
technologies.
Keysight acquired and teamed up with the
software experience test company
Eggplant last year, as part of our
strategy to expand our long-standing
heritage of electronics tests into
software tests.
The Eggplant test platform uses a form of
digital twin of the user interface and
AI to create new tests as a human tester
would. Where today much of the design
workflow is still performed manually
with lots of human assistance, we see a
future where intelligent software
technologies will increase workflow
automation dramatically as they are
doing for software tests using
Eggplant's test solutions.
And then there are digital twins more
generally, which can be viewed as a type
of very advanced simulation. The
integrated circuit design ecosystem is
deeply familiar with the power of
simulation technology which has enabled
many IC designs to be realized on the
first pass, or sometimes with just one
minor revision.
This outcome was driven by the high cost
of multiple tape-outs and the growing
challenges in complexity and time to
market.
Simulation technologies have expanded
into many other complex
design domains to reduce design cycle
times. Simulation is expanding across the
workflow and into higher level systems.
This includes linkages between design
verification by measuring physical
prototypes and automating correlation
with the simulation prediction of the
simulation or digital twin.
Now let's take a look at a couple of
examples that use these concepts to
overcome the four design challenges.
Open RAN is an intelligent radio access
network integrated onto general purpose
platforms with open software interfaces.
This architecture enables flexibility
and interoperability with multi-vendor
5G deployments.
This diagram is a high-level generalized
architecture
of the 5G O-RAN ecosystem.
As the leader in 5G radio protocol and
network tests,
Keysight leverages end-to-end solutions
intelligent software automation and
continually updated protocol simulators
to lower the overall cost of deployment
and operations of wireless networks.
Many of those in the 5G ecosystem know
that requirements change frequently and
being first to market is of utmost
importance.
This requires a deep partnership between
tool providers and design customers at
many levels concurrently.
You can see that addressing challenges
of complexity, time, dynamic requirements,
and productivity in the 5G
communications ecosystem requires usage
of intelligent software technologies and
end-to-end solutions that are
continuously updated and approved.
Automotive cybersecurity is critical to
the amount of communication and
computational capability in modern
automotive systems especially as
autonomous driving systems mature.
Note that security spans well beyond
software hackers gaining access to
critical digital systems.
It includes personal and property safety,
property,
sensor confusion, and cybersecurity
resiliency.
No one wants a bad actor taking control
of their self-driving car
especially while you're in it.
Cyber-hijacking is a horrible thought
and everyone from IC designers to
developers of autonomous systems are
dedicating themselves to avoid these
scenarios.
End-to-end security solutions,
intelligent automation advanced
analytics and digital scenario
simulations are all being utilized to
address security challenges
in the automotive industry. I hope you
found this presentation valuable.
Please keep innovating and pushing the
limits of technology.
Don't let challenges get in your way.
Figure out ways to address those
challenges and bring your customers
solutions as fast as possible,
and thank you very much.
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