Archive for March, 2017
Thursday, March 30th, 2017
Today is the day some EDA purists thought would never happen: The disassembling of an industry status quo that’s been in place for over 20 years
As of today, Mentor Graphics has been sold and is fully owned by Siemens. Now Mentor’s arc of history will be decided by folks not residing in the green forests and hills of northern Oregon, and the Big Three cartel is no more. A cartel which has slowly consolidated the playing field over time until nary a startup can be seen.
The power vested in the Big Three EDA companies has grown steadily and inexorably over these years, as has their market dominance. Examination of recent numbers provided by the ESD Alliance Market Statistics Service indicates that today, in excess of 85-percent of the revenue earned in the EDA industry can be attributed to the combination of Synopsys, Cadence, and Mentor Graphics.
These three companies, their leadership, sales prowess, and increasing control of the conversation and technical direction in the industry has made for a powerful cartel. But again, that cartel is no more and the crystal ball predicting future dynamics within the EDA industry has gone dark.
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Tags: Cadence, EDA Consortium, ESD Alliance, ESD Alliance Market Statistics Service, Gary Smith, Judith Marks, Mentor Graphics, Siemens, Synopsys, System-level design, Tony Hemmelgarn, Walden C. Rhines 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 30th, 2017
You need no more evidence than the just-published agenda for June’s Design Automation Conference in Austin to prove that the EDA industry is now a complex amalgamation of technologies, applications and markets. Not to mention people.
This year’s keynotes and skywalks cover a range of topics: From how the IoT will make smart buildings smarter, to why hardware/software co-design is being relabeled as digital twin[ning], why III-V compound semiconductors are the wave of the future, how wearable devices will soon be able to snoop around and find out if you’re having a bad day, and – did we mention the IoT?
New this year, even politics will get its 25 minutes of fame with a keynote outlining what’s up with ICs in China.
In other words, at DAC 2017 the topics are all over the map. You no longer just hear about the nuts and nuances of design; now you hear as much about what’s going on downstream in the system that runs on the IC as you hear about designing the IC itself.
There is a deeper meaning in all of this, of course.
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Tags: 54th DAC, Design Automation Conference, IoT No Comments »
Thursday, March 23rd, 2017
Something historic and poignant is taking place on Thursday, April 6th, that should be of interest to absolutely everyone in the EDA and IP communities. The four most powerful men in these two industries will be on stage for an ESD Alliance panel discussion led by Semiconductor Engineering’s Ed Sperling.
The four panelists include Synopsys Chairman & CEO Aart de Geus, Cadence President & CEO Lip-Bu Tan, Mentor Graphics Chairman & CEO Wally Rhines, and ARM CEO Simon Segars.
The April 6th event will be historic because these Big Four unequivocally define EDA and IP – just as Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins, and Crocker defined Railroads in the West – and it’ll be poignant because you’ll never see them together again. Too many changes ahead.
Of course, the ESDA panel will also be whimsical: You’ll know no more about these CEOs and their companies at the end of the evening than you knew when you first arrived. That doesn’t mean the evening won’t be entertaining.
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Tags: Aart de Geus, Abu Dhabi, ARM, Brexit, Cadence, Charles Crocker, China, Collis P. Huntington, Ed Sperling, EDA, EDA 360, Egypt, ESD Allicance, Germany, GlobalFoundries, India, Japan, Leland Stanford, Lip-bu Tan, Mark Hopkins, Mentor Graphics, Pakistan, Russia, Saudia Arabia, Semiconductor Engineering, Siemens, Simon Segars, SoftBank, Synopsys, Taiwan, TSMC, U.S., UK, Wally Rhines 2 Comments »
Thursday, March 9th, 2017
This is a simple post with just two messages. First, EDA is hiring. All over the globe. Mentor Graphics lists over 200 openings, Cadence has almost 300 openings, and Synopsys has a staggering 900+ openings worldwide.
Of course, EDACafe’s own Mark Gilbert could have told you this. It wasn’t necessary to scour the websites of the Big Three in EDA to learn about the many jobs currently available in the industry, most for software developers, not surprisingly.
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Tags: Cadence, Larry Disenhof, Mark Gilbert, Mentor Graphics, Russia, Synopsys 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 2nd, 2017
DVCon generates a lot of respect, and for good reason. Engineers have attended this conference for over 25 years to further refine their skills in the area of design and verification. Yet, there’s a problem in paradise.
In an industry like EDA that’s super dominated by just three players, there’s little if any room in the industry – or at a conference like DVCon – to showcase the ideas and innovations of the Small Guys. The Big Guys teach tutorials and present papers; the Small Guys get to hang posters in the hallways.
All of that was supposed to change tonight thanks to the sponsorship of the ESD Alliance and OneSpin Solutions, as well as Vista Ventures’ Jim Hogan.
Tonight, six of the Small Guys in verification appeared on a panel moderated by Hogan hoping to get their 60-minute shot at fame. A post-Happy-Hour hour in which to lay out their case for customers to come and sample the kind of innovation that everyone knows is the watchword of technology startups, particularly in EDA.
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Tags: Adnan Hamid, Andy Stein, Avery Design Systems, Breker Verification Systems, Charles Darwin, DVCon 2017, ESD Alliance, Jim Hogan, Montana Design, OneSpin Solutions, Phil Moorby, Prakash Narain, Raik Brinkmann, Real Intent, Rick Carlson, Steve Alvin, Verific Design Automation No Comments »
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