The pre-DAC acquisitions of Denali and Virage drastically realign the core of the EDA industry. When IP first came on the scene here in the US, (I think 3Soft was the first IP company I saw), many people figured that IP would become another form of delivery for chip designs – and that they would come from the semiconductor companies.

The EDA executives’ explicit remarks about how IP is key to their continued growth could turn EDA into an industry of IP haves and IP have nots.

How does this EDA realignment affect customers? We asked Atrenta vice president of marketing and industry voice Mike Gianfagna, ” What does the EDA industry realignment mean for customers?”

Here’s what he said:

Realignment can mean two things that are related, but a bit different.

One form of realignment we’re seeing is the IP market merging into the EDA market. This is definitely good for IP customers. Effective IP reuse requires a blend of quality, highly validated IP and a good reuse methodology. The methodology need is for both authoring IP to be reusable and implementing the reuse itself. EDA is a good place to bring all this together. Most larger EDA companies understand what it takes to deliver high quality, validated designs. They also understand what a reuse methodology should include. A lot of the smaller IP shops don’t have this perspective.

Another realignment is the “annexation” of embedded software into EDA. Synopsys is validating this trend with their buying spree, and Cadence is validating the trend with their EDA360 proposal and some buying, too. This is also good for the customer. If software development teams can help to drive the silicon creation process, we are going to see some new killer apps emerge as a result.
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What do you think about the combination of IP and EDA? Let us know in the “comments” section.

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