Several in the EDA Business Model panel at DesignCon addressed the idea that EDA vendors should link their revenues to the success of the product that is designed using their tools. Afterwards, a software guy told me that he is somewhat troubled by this idea.

“If EDA vendors don't make money off of their tools unless their customers produce successful design or good products, isn't that the same as somebody telling Microsoft that they won't pay them for the use of Word unless what they write using Word is successful or good. That's just nonsense. Microsoft sells you Word and you're the one responsible for the quality of what your produce with it. That's not Microsoft's responsibility.”

“EDA tools are obviously more sophisticated than Word, but they don't provide the lion's share of the innovation and creativity in the end product. That's the responsibility of the customer.”

“Another analogy would be that a good programmer has to pay more for the use of a programming IDE than a bad programmer. Again, that's just nonsense. This doesn't take away from the importance of having high-quality design tools, but the burden still remains on the user to do good things with good tools.”