Vendor, Vidi, Vici! - by Mad Ned - The Mad Ned Memo

There exists in the tech business world a food chain of sorts, with the end-consumer appropriately on top. Below them, are the providers of consumer electronics goods and services, and below them, the business-to-business type companies that sell things to the top-level companies. This is more commonly referred to as the global supply chain — but it is in reality more of a tree, (or maybe a tree root system) than a chain.

You of course recognize the names of those top-tier tech companies you buy products and services from. They are the Apples, Googles, Samsungs of the world, along with many others.

And while you do not directly (usually) buy products from their suppliers, you also probably recognize many of those names as well. I am talking now about names like Intel, ARM, and Qualcomm. Giants themselves, with many vendors in turn selling to them.

Below that top-tier though also lives a world of more obscure companies, like the so-called fabless hardware suppliers that supply design information for specific functions but do not actually fabricate any real chips. Or, companies that create software for designing and building electronic systems. This latter group is known as Electronic Design Automation (EDA), and it is the area I have spent the last 25 years of my career working in.

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