editor's blog
Subscribe Now

An Alliance of Alliance Members

The other day Mixel announced a MIPI Alliance ecosystem partnership. So… is that a branch of the MIPI Alliance? A new MIPI Alliance? I was a bit confused. (Not an infrequent state of mind for me, but never mind…)

This gets to some of the subtleties of industry partnerships. If you’re not careful, you can run afoul of anti-trust collusion laws. These laws were put in place because, in the olden days, big companies would get together and divide up territories and agree on pricing and basically guarantee that they would all get rich at the expense of consumers, who would be stuck in a market with only illusory competition. (In the current US climate, the laws are probably considered meddlesome job-killing regulation, so who knows if they will survive…)

So even if a few companies get together informally for the innocent purpose of setting standards, they can get into trouble. Which is why standards bodies are carefully crafted with legal structures, rules, and bylaws that ensure their members aren’t entangled in collusion troubles.

Ecosystems are a bit different: they’re typically made up not of peers, but of complementary businesses that don’t compete. The idea is to provide a complete solution; the goal is to increase sales for all the members. There are a lot of ecosystems, formal and informal, and, as far as I can tell, there aren’t any formal requirements (even though they might have some competing members, or members with unrelated competing divisions).

So, in this particular case, after confirming with Mixel, we have various members of the MIPI Alliance, a standards body, forming an unnamed ecosystem to drive sales.

More info in their press release

Leave a Reply

featured blogs
Apr 23, 2025
Just when I thought the day was as strange as it could get, I ran across this video'¦...

featured paper

How Google and Intel use Calibre DesignEnhancer to reduce IR drop and improve reliability

Sponsored by Siemens Digital Industries Software

Through real-world examples from Intel and Google, we highlight how Calibre’s DesignEnhancer maximizes layout modifications while ensuring DRC compliance.

Click here for more information

featured chalk talk

Accelerating Tapeouts with Synopsys Cloud and AI
Sponsored by Synopsys
In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton and Vikram Bhatia from Synopsys explore how you can accelerate your next tapeout with Synopsys Cloud and AI. They also discuss new enhancements and customer use cases that leverage AI with hybrid cloud deployment scenarios, and how this platform can help CAD managers and engineers reduce licensing overheads and seamlessly run complex EDA design flows through Synopsys Cloud.
Jul 8, 2024
71,252 views