We took my daughter to Disneyland this past Friday for her birthday. I know that she was playing hookie but please don’t call the cops. Her birthday was actually on Saturday but we decided to go on Friday because it would be less crowded and she’d get to go on a lot more rides. We had a great day and arrived home around 11pm dog tired and with sore feet.

On the way home, as the kids slept in the backseat, Joyce and I figured out that we were able to go on 12 attractions in about 7 hours at the park. Not bad. If we had gone on the weekend, no way we’d have been able to do as much, not to mention the frustration of waiting in long slow moving lines. Of course, Disneyland doesn’t want to frustrate its visitors or have them wait in long lines, but it can’t just add more rides and attractions on busy days and get rid of them on slow days.

Back in the 1970s, Disneyland tried to manage this issue by providing each visitor with a coupon book that contained a limited number of A, B, C, D, and E tickets, each type of ticket good for a different class of ride. The E Ticket was the most valuable, good for the most popular rides and attractions. In this way, Disney knew exactly how many visits there would be each day to each class of attraction.

Disnet E Tickey Circa 1970s

Which got me thinking that most corporate design centers are managed like Disneyland used to do it, IT departments handing out A - E tickets to its visitors via LSF in order to prioritize the use of limited CPUs and licenses. Like Disney, they can’t just easily drive up a truck of CPUs and licenses on busy days and send them back on slow days. In fact, it’s even harder for IT departments because you never know when a busy day or hour might come or what “attraction” will be the most popular.

But some of that may be changing.

Licensing has become much more flexible over the last few years. Cadence and Synopsys offer short-term licenses that allow customers to peak their license usage almost on demand for periods as short as a week. Cadence offers a license for mixed-mode simulation that allows customers to trade several A tickets for their basic analog simulator for an E ticket for their more advanced and expensive mixed-mode simulator. And I’m sure there are several other examples of which I am not aware.

Hardware is a lot more difficult. Whereas a peak license can be downloaded over the internet, hardware can’t be shipped and installed overnight. Or can it?

Cloud computing has been all the rage the last year or so and as it goes with rages there has been a lot of hype, misconceptions, and promises. And as is always the case, there emerges the first practical application of the over-hyped technology. We’re seeing the industry start to focus on so-called hybrid cloud environments that allow companies with captive private data centers to virtually provision additional peak resources from public clouds like Amazon EC2. There is a HUGE potential cost savings for companies operating large data centers. The Economist quotes a study by McKinsey that estimates “on average only 6% of data center capacity is used” since data centers are scaled for near peak capacity needs, not average needs. That’s like building Disneyland to handle the busiest day of the year and letting the rides sit idle the rest of the year. Good for the visitors but hardly cost effective.

With a hybrid cloud, data centers can scale to meet the needs of the users. For IT and CAD groups, adding additional CPUs and licenses is kinda like adding additional Splash Mountain ride capacity on a hot day.  For designers, it’s kinda like having your own private E Ticket ride whenever you want it. And for EDA companies, it’s a way to keep the IT, CAD, and design guys from getting frustrated.

No waiting in LSF queues.

No getting cut off in line by the VIP project.

Ride as much as you like whenever you like.

Surely, The Happiest Place on Earth!

Posted under Xuropa, industry