Will the market dominance of EDA’s “big three” remain immune from the new factors that are impacting the semiconductor ecosystem? We tried to answer this question with the help of Laurie Balch (Pedestal Research), Harry Foster (Siemens EDA), David Kanter (MLCommons), KT Moore (Cadence), Wally Rhines (Cornami)
In Part One of this special report we focused on the factors of stability that have contributed to the creation of the EDA oligopoly (Cadence, Siemens EDA and Synopsys, of course) and still underpin the incumbents’ market dominance: a certain degree of complementarity among the ‘big three’ product offerings, and the high cost incurred by customers if they want to switch from one EDA vendor to another. We also examined the overall performance of EDA solutions for IC/ASIC design through the findings of the 2022 Wilson Research Group Functional Verification Study, which shows – on average – a 24 percent rate of first silicon success and a 33 percent rate of project completion without schedule slips. Additionally, we discussed the attitude of the EDA industry towards benchmarking and open-source tools. In this second part of our report we will address some of the criticisms that have been raised against the EDA oligopoly and will consider some potential factors of change. We will do that, again, through interviews with EDA professionals (Harry Foster, Chief Scientist Verification at Siemens EDA; KT Moore, VP of corporate marketing at Cadence; Wally Rhines, CEO at Cornami and formerly CEO at Mentor Graphics for twenty-four years), an EDA market analyst (Laurie Balch, Research Director at Pedestal Research) and an executive from a benchmarking consortium (David Kanter, Executive Director at MLCommons).
A different view on the EDA status quo: DARPA and the OpenRoad project
Is the vendor oligopoly a positive or a negative thing for the EDA users? Over the past few years, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has often expressed opinions that are relevant for a discussion on this topic. In particular, the EDA theme has been addressed by Serge Leef when he was Program Manager of the DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office. Other relevant concepts can be found in the OpenRoad project lead by Professor Andrew Kahng from UC San Diego, one of the open-source EDA initiatives supported by DARPA. Unfortunately, neither Serge Leef – who left DARPA last year – nor any other DARPA spokesperson, nor Professor Kahng could be reached for comments, so here we will refer to documents that are publicly available online.
