Semiconductor Design Enablement: CEO Panel
In an earlier blog I declared EDA is Dead by suggesting EDA is still living in the house it grew up in, like living in your parents’ basement. Great analogy if you think about it, which I have. At the 46th Design Automation Conference the CEO Panel, Futures for EDA: A CEO View, was sleeping room only, with Aart de Geus, Wally Rhines, and Lip-Bu Tan. Missing was Rajiv Madhaven, which again supports the position that Magma is no longer relevant to EDA, but I digress. The rumor I heard was that Art would not attend if Rajiv did, Wally would not attend if Art did not, and this was all done by passing notes during lunch period.
The age old EDA whine and cheesy is “Why are EDA revenues a scant 2% of semiconductor industry revenues?” or “Why is EDA living in the semiconductor industry’s basement?” What I heard, and always hear in this regards, blah blah blah more of the same:
Aart de Geus, chairman and CEO of Synopsys: Only economic pressure, such as that being exerted by the current recession, can change the status quo. If EDA tools can help alleviate chip makers economic pain by enabling more efficient design, they may be able to command a higher percentage of revenue.
Walden Rhines, chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics: I don’t see EDA commanding a higher portion of semiconductor industry revenue anytime soon. The easier way is to grow semiconductor revenue and get more that way.
Lip-Bu Tan, president and CEO of Cadence mostly spoke venture capital speak, I couldn’t translate, sorry.
To me the problem is simple, the term EDA is the limiting factor. On Twitter if you search EDA, Al Qaeda comes up! EDA is also the Economic Development Administration, Electronic Document Access, European Defense Agency, etc… Lets face it, the term Electronic Design Automation is outdated and no longer describes what we do. Look at Synopsys, the EDA monopoly, what do they really do?
Synopsys is a world leader in electronic design automation (EDA), supplying the global electronics market with the software, IP and services used in semiconductor design and manufacturing. Synopsys’ comprehensive, integrated portfolio of implementation, verification, IP, manufacturing and FPGA solutions… Now look at the Synopsys product list: It literally covers the alphabet with the exception of B, K, and Q, so if you want to be acquired by Synopsys those letters are your best bet for product names.
Synopsys is clearly in the Semiconductor Design Enablement business, concept through production, and how long before they deliver the actual silicon right to your door step? Synopsys, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNPS), a world leader in software and IP for semiconductor design, verification and manufacturing, that my friends is not just EDA, that is Semiconductor Design Enablement.
I do enjoy these CEO fireside chats but find little value in them. These three men are at the top of the heap and you are asking them what the view is like. How about asking the emerging Semiconductor Design Enablement CEOs, the industry innovators, how to grow the market because that is exactly what they are doing. Interesting idea, sounds like a great set of blogs: The Semiconductor Design Enablement CEO Series!
Daniel,
I thought that after Magma and Synopsys settled their long-running lawsuit that it was now possible for the two CEOs to be on the same platform.
There is also another popular use of EDA: Electronic Directory Assistance.
When Joe Costello visited DAC this year I heard that it created a wave of enthusiasm normally conferred upon rock stars and American Idol winners. Joe was famous for talking about the big four EDA companies as, “dogs eating out of the same bowl.” I took this to mean that EDA companies were simply trying to get a bigger percentage of a fixed size market. For EDA revenues to grow we need to redefine new categories not being served at all today.
Design enablement sounds like a plausible direction to take.
What if there were a way for EDA companies to take an equity position in the companies they sell to? If the design gets to market and sells well, then the EDA companies would receive a percentage of the profits?
I remember at one EDA company we would accept equity in promising start-ups as part of their payment for EDA tools. The long-term goal in that case was that if the start-up went IPO or was acquired then the EDA vendor would receive a large payback.
Even semiconductor companies like Intel have a Venture Capital group that invests in EDA companies, so maybe we need to turn this around and have EDA companies take equity in their customers with a long-term payout as the goal.
Dan,
Interesting perspective on the CEO panel. Are the CEOs “at the top of the heap” or looking over an eroding hillside?
Look for my analysis of the CEO panel later on my blog this week.
To Daniel Payne: The “tools for equity” program was one of my projects when I was in Strategic Marketing at Cadence. It would take way too long to go into here, but suffice it to say that it has been tried before.
The #1 problem is that EDA is by no means the center of the ecosystem financially or strategically… the foundries are.
See the TSMC keynote for more on the “community-based” business model.
-Mike
Dan,
I will disagree with you on calling the EDA industry as Semiconductor Design Enablement industry.
I do not think there is scope for the EDA industry to earn more money (earning more money being my definition of progress) by narrowing it further from ‘elcetronic’ to ’semiconductor’. If anything, we should drop the first qualifier altogether. In this case, ‘electronic’ and just stay with ‘design automation’. All this, so that we can then embrace mechanical. civil, chemical, process and what have you under the DA umbrella. I have grown an interest in design automation in general and in future I will be spending time on building generalist design automation/enablement ideas. Its going to be a while but I think eventually the DA industry will go down the path where all designs are equal. Not just electronic or semiconductors.
Thanks for listening.
Mike,
I agree that foundries like TSMC are central in defining what EDA tools are qualified for their nodes.
TSMC is at the forefront of creating a Virtual IDM eco-system.
Daniel
I agree that EDA, at least the major players have kept their focus on Semiconductor product turn-on, henc can be renamed to Semiconductor Design Enablement. However, they have failed to keep the cycle simple and clean. I’ve been trying to hit the Verification bottleneck in a different approach. Someone, who’s interested and has some background on Hardware-Assisted verification, please do get in touch with me on halady_girish@hotmail.com
-Cheers
Girish Halady
Found this post very useful, thanks