(Photo courtesy Yankee November)

Hi! This is Harry Gries (aka the ASIC guy). And this is my first blog post at Xuropa.

It’s been almost a year since I made some bold predictions on my other blog concerning the impact of Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service on the EDA industry. So, I thought it would be interesting to revisit that blog post and see where we are today, this being my first official post on the Xuropa Blog.

The gist of my original post was that a revolution does not happen overnight, but often depends on the confluence of critical technologies. As Ron Ploof had pointed out in his post on the Birth of a New Media Revolution, social/new media required easy-to-use publishing tools (e.g. Wordpress), simple syndication/distribution (e.g. RSS), and low-cost bandwidth. Once those were in place, new media hit the tipping point.

My similar prediction concerning an EDA evolution was as follows:

The pieces are coming together for a revolution in EDA. Like most revolutions, it is starting small, hardly noticed by the big guys on the block. In the next 5 years, it will change our industry forever by leveling the playing field, allowing smaller EDA companies to compete with larger ones, giving customers greater flexibility on how and when they access tools and which vendor’s tools they use.

And the three barriers that I predicted would need to come down were:

1. The high cost of sales, marketing, and support.
2. Licensing models that lock-in customers.
3. Lack of comprehensive standards for tool interoperability.

So, where do we stand with respect to these barriers as compared to one year ago?

1. A funny thing happened since last Labor Day. The world’s economy hit a bit of a bump in the road. Reducing the cost of sales is no longer a good idea or a key initiative … it’s a matter of survival. And “doing more with less” is the mantra. In the world of EDA, we’ve seen companies slash their AE headcount and marketing budgets. New media, which was pretty much just Synopsys last year, is now a part of almost every company’s marketing plan. And Xuropa, in particular, has seen growth from just a stealthy startup to having a key customer in Cadence and dozens of other EDA companies looking to adopt on-line labs as part of the sales process as a way of doing more with less.
2. Licensing models continue to become more flexible. Synopsys introduced e-licensing, similar to Cadence’s eDACard, enabling peak licenses for periods as short as a week. Cadence launched their Hosted Design Solutions which constitutes a SaaS-like option for small companies looking to turn capital expenditures (CapEx) into Operating Expenses (OpEx). Semiconductor companies want to take advantage of the cost savings and flexibility of cloud computing and are asking their EDA suppliers for flexible licensing models to support them. And the idea of SaaS as a way to differentiate a software offering is being conceived by EDA execs, not just Xuropa and the crazy bloggers. Look for that to happen in the next year.
3. On the standards front, we’ve had the merger of Accellera and Spirit. We’ve also had a new flow offering from Synopsys, called Lynx, which could form the basis for an industry standard flow. And we’ve had other flow offerings from independent consultants like Steve Golson of Trilobyte with his flowmaker flow. Synopsys’ VMM now run’s on Mentor’s and Cadence’s simulators and vice versa for OVM. There’s talk of burying the UPF/CPF hatchet. And the world is awash in peace, love, and interoperability.

As I said last year, I’m optimistic and I’m also a realist. It will take several years and this revolution is still in its childhood. But there has been a lot of growing up in the last year. I can’t wait to write this post again next year when the revolution will be in its adolescence.

harry

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