It Takes a Whole Ecosystem
to Raise a Platform

Violins gush from surround-sound speakers. Harp notes cascade from the unseen orchestra. Simulated “golden hour” light emanates from an animated sky as the cartoon sun falls behind scribbled hills. Cutesy woodland creatures with enormous eyes emerge from their burrows, nests, and perches to gather in the clearing in an incomprehensibly improbable commingling of predators and prey. Anthropomorphized and articulate animals belt out Broadwayesque showtunes as the colorful cast choreographs the grand finale – pulling tears from the eyes of innocents and tipping the eyes of the more worldly audience into a jaded roll.

In feature-length animated movies, ecosystems are portrayed as happy, cooperative collaborations of life where the stark realities of the food chain never surface and the ugly truths of survival in the wilderness are swept away with happy music and gentle, fictitious characters. In fact, the whole scene reads a lot like a typical high-tech press release where two or more companies are cooperating to “strengthen the ecosystem” for a new FPGA platform. Eagles and bunnies are working peacefully together – making nice to bring us a set of capabilities that neither could manage on their own.

In the real world, however, far from the fictional paradises of Disney and PR Newswire, life is a brutal fight for survival and supremacy. Those companies whose chips, software, boards and IP are always depicted playing nicely together to make your next design a snap would often be just as happy to put each other out of business rather than join forces and share your engineering budget. Nonetheless, cooperation is what makes the platform succeed, so unlikely alliances are formed almost daily – with levels of investment ranging from honest, long-term, deep-technical collaboration to a quick handshake and an OK on a joint press announcement – complete with custom quotes fabricated by PR firms and attributed to agreeable corporate executives. [more]