I'm beginning to think that the software development community can benefit strongly from the innovations that have taken place in the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) world over the past 10+ years - specifically in re-use, process and in declarative models like VHDL (including a repository for free componentry). What is very interesting is the strong use of meta-models, very UML like, but obviously inclusive of systemic models/annotation - in the case of EDA, thinks like heat, power, timing that translate well into enterprise development to systemic characteristics like security, availaiblity, scalability which allow us to take micro-architectural patterns an annotate them as componentry which can then be assembled, verified, synthesized and planned.

Another interesting element, that most monitoring this community have seen is an increasing recognition that IP not invented within corporate 4 walls is okay, so long as it can be successfully integrated - which at times can be challenging:

EETimes.com - IP assembly represents a sea change in the design of ASICs :

“This has led to the rise of a new term to describe ASIC design: IP assembly. The suggestion is that ASIC design now is different in kind from the days when we wrote new register transfer level for everything. Instead of designing, we are assembling prefabricated blocks into new configurations.

Somehow, the word doesn't match reality, though. A lot more goes into producing a working, yielding SoC than just putting things together. Not the least of the efforts is in creating new blocks to implement functions that aren't available as needed from the internal and external IP worlds. But the amount of work in ”just“ connecting the dots-floor planning, interconnecting the blocks correctly, placement and routing, timing, signal integrity and power closure and rule checking-can be huge. It can also require considerable creativity. And no one, other than an IP vendor, has suggested that employing existing IP reduces the verification task in the least.”

That aside, I think that SaaS and modular software approaches are following this trend, especially with the move to virtualized infrastructures and utility models. I have spoken before on Intellectual Capital marketplaces for software components, and think that we should look to the IP foundries, communities for IP sharing, and customizability for IC componentry as we as a software IC cottage industry execute on our plans for SaaS on a Sun Grid substrate.

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