BDA chief operating office Paul Estrada has been at Berkeley Design Automation for over 7 years and is as enthused about the company today as when he first arrived. Particularly, because he says BDA is getting more attention than ever these days thanks to its growing portfolio of leading-edge products.

“We are a small business that continues to grow,” Estrada says with pride, “focusing on nanometer verification, a market where there are lots of problems, but where we are definitely making [inroads]. It’s an area that’s ripe for innovation, and better tooling, and as we don’t see the big EDA companies putting time or effort into making progress there, it’s a sweet spot in the market for us.”

Sounds great, so what’s the elevator pitch for potential customers?

Estrada responds easily: “Many companies continue to buy from our competition – principally Cadence and Synopsys – but we go into leading edge RF and analog/mixed-signal design teams and ask them what they can’t do with their current tools. They tell us and then we do those things for them with our tools. As a result, they buy even more tools from us and we go on from there.

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