Gary Smith EDA has set the gold standard for EDA analysis for longer than GSEDA has actually existed. That’s because the core of the team has been together since way back in the 1990’s when the group was internal to Gartner Dataquest and had only one charter: Track the fortunes of the companies that then constituted the EDA industry.
Profound developments have unfolded since that time: Gartner saw fit to divest itself of an internal EDA analysis team in 2006, Gary Smith EDA was founded to embrace the market opportunity left to them by the Gartner decision, and the IP industry came out of left field and became as important a part of the chip design equation as the design tools themselves.
EDAC’s membership expanded to include companies like MIPS and ARM, the abstraction levels for design moved in fits and starts up and up, and Gary Smith’s affable expertise and relentless push for an ESL state of mind became one in the same in the minds of many in the industry. Then tragically last summer, Gary Smith succumbed to illness and a singular voice intimately associated with EDA industry was silenced. However, that was not the final chapter for GSEDA.
