For tasks  that are not well defined both partners agree up on  a hourly rate

Typically applied to :

• Feasability studies leading to well defined design task that can be handled as Fixed Price modules
• Design review, evaluation and debugging assessment
• Application support
• ''Fire department actions''    if already a lot has gone wrong in your  critical  project  and you need an expert to fix it.
• Debugging and analysis of field rejects.
• Additional designer support for non VME-Asic layout realisation after design finish.
• Concurrent engineering. Design has started before specification  freeze  has taken place leading to  a lot  of additional communicaton effort due to a constant need for change requests.

Fixed price is possible  for  well defined design tasks  where it is possible to estimate  the needed effort to reach the specification and agreed  time schedule . Typically applied to:

• Large projects with VME-Asic design Expert team with included VME-Asic controlled project risk management
• Well defined macro modules for re-use or behavioral module description.

Requiered are:

• Stable  module specification from the beginning of design task
• Well proven stable EDA- design environment and  production technology
• Well defined deliverables
• Available resources

ASIC design is an innovative task  so the above are almost never fulfilled entirely. This is why a fixed price cooperation model  has to include risk management by   a good documentation of changes, time schedule status reporting and  the ability of  change requests.  In case a change request ( exp.: additional application specification, technology design rule changes making design simulations untrustworthy,... ) leads to considerable effort  endangering the time schedule, VME-Asic  will estimate the additional needed effort within 48 hours. Then both partners will have to agree up on the modification of the contract or take back of the change request. Change requests will only be implemented if the customer has agreed upon the estimated additional time and cost. 

On-Site cooperation  is very usefull when close interaction with your  project design team is needed: if tasks are not well defined causing a lot of communication effort, during "Fire department actions",... . It also gives the advantage of  getting to know better the VME-Asic expert which you entrust with your design tasks.This is very important to us as a lot can go wrong in a project because of bad communication between people. Typically first contacts between new customers and VME-Asic are prefered to start with an on-site interaction. This could be fulltime and/or  if pratical after some time  a mixture of on-site and off-site interaction.  Augmenting your design team with on site experts to meet time- to- market requierements can provide an attractive alternative to using unproven  off- site contract staff.

 VME-Asic offers Off- site support ability over secure Virtual Private Network cooperation from the VME-Asic Office in Grünwald. As such the EDA design environment of the customer can be used which offers several advantages. Advantages are: Physical design data at the customers premises  stays under the EDA responsability  of the customer and  as such is always constantly up to date with the actual customer project design kit environment, available for status assessment and back-up. No time is lost for Design kit synchronisation between customer and contractor , no off site loss of data and no additional project EDA costs occur.