The world did not come to an end in 2012, so we can now breathe a sigh of relief and prognosticate about 2013. Or can we? Well, we can but what sort of world will it be for the EDA and IP industries in 2013? Should we even go there?
We think so. So we asked industry friends, associates, clients and media folks to ponder what industry-shattering events or breakthroughs we might see in EDA & IP this coming year.
We’ll be posting predictions from these industry visionaries over the next couple of weeks. We hope that you will find them as enlightening and entertaining as we did.
We’ll begin with some eye-opening predictions by blogger, author and industry expert, Paul McLellan.
2013 is all about lithography, EUV, the end of Moore’s law, 3D as a savior etc. Specifically:
• There will be a lot of discussion about the costs of 20nm since it is so much more than 28nm. It will be a very slow transition with some people going straight to 14/16nm (which is really 20nm with smaller transistors which is really 26nm with smaller transistors). Expect lots of discussion about the end of Moore’s law.
• EUV lithography will not become commercial during 2013 and so will miss the 10nm node.
• TSV-based 3D ICs will start to become mainstream. Memory on logic, and mixed digital/analog on interposer. Expect lots of discussion about “more than Moore” and how 3D is the new way for scaling.
• The death of a giant will finally take place. Nokia, still #1 only a year ago, will be dismembered. A consortium of Apple, Google and Samsung will buy the patents for billions. Huawei will buy the handset and base-station businesses for peanuts.
• Synopsys will acquire Mentor. EDA will otherwise be fairly boring with the big three being the only companies able to attack the upcoming problems that require dozens of tools to be updated, not just a new point tool inserted in the flow.
• If the IPO markets are open, Jasper, eSilicon, Atrenta and Tensilica will go public. If someone doesn’t buy them first.
