Montreal is not a place that normally comes to mind when you think of EDA. Space Codesign Systems, however, is on a fast track to change that in a classically Canadian way – calm, cool, and collected.
When I spoke with General Manager Dr. Gary Dare on a beautiful afternoon in Southern France at SAME Forum in early October, he explained how the company started in Canada, and the road map they have set out for themselves: “We’re an EDA company, an EDA startup, and we are definitely based in Montreal. If you doubt that EDA has a place in Canada, we will soon convince you otherwise.
“Space Codesign comes from the acronym, SystemC Partition of ACE, which was the 2004 research project at the Ecole Polytechnique [University of Montreal] that our technology is based on. In 2008, Professor Guy Bois and various graduate students associated with the project decided to do a spin-out, and in 2010 Space Codesign Systems went into operation.”
He laughed and added, “Our company has nothing to do with space, however. But it has everything to do with hardware/software co-design – doing it simultaneously, rather than the usual way of ESL hardware design followed by software design. The audience we are targeting is the systems architects who are looking at the algorithmic level and need a route to design exploration and implementation. Our tools give them that route.
