If the title of today’s post sounds familiar, that’s not surprising. The most popular post in the history of The Breker Trekker blog, by a significant margin, was “An EDA Industry of Startups, Behemoths, Corner Stores, and Zombies?” published almost three years ago. I thought that it would be fun to revisit this topic in light of the changes in the EDA industry over the past three years. Have these changes fundamentally altered our world? Please read on to see.
I’ll begin, as I did in the original post, by noting that the EDA industry used to be divided into only three categories: major leaguers, minor leaguers, and startups. Nearly all EDA startups disappeared after three or four years, with three possible endgames: acquisition, initial public offering (IPO), or bankruptcy. The major leaguers, at one time or another, included Daisy, Mentor, Valid, Cadence, Synopsys, and Avant.
