EDA Blog | Insights for Designers Implementing EDA Tools/Techniques in Chip and System Designs

October 10, 2008
Mentor acts out of the box
By Gabe Moretti

I have been very excited by Mentor's acquisition of Flomerics because it represents the first time that a traditional EDA vendors has acknowledged and acted upon the fact that a system is more than just the electronic components. The problem with ESL, as I had stated in numerous venues for many years, is the "E", since it is impossible to consider all of the architectural tradeoffs when you are constrained by the parochial approach that provides only tools to explore a portion of the system, namely the electronic part. I do understand, of course, that The Mathworks, a traditional provider of system level solutions, has, in the last few years, extended its products portfolio to provide support for electronic system level design, but Mentor, a company that by the way was the first EDA vendor to collaborate with The Mathworks, is the first EDA company to enter a non-electronics market segment when it acquired Flomerics.

Had Mentor followed the traditional EDA industry convention, it would have purchased the company, retained what was directly related to its EDA market, and sold or otherwise disposed of the rest of the company. This it did not do: on the contrary!

Henry Potts, Vice President and General Manager of the Systems Design Division, explained the corporate strategy as follows: "As you know, the development of an electronic product requires much more than the design of the PCB. Yes, we will continue to enhance our PCB systems design flows but this is really not enough to keep up with advancing technology and our customers business needs. We will continue to make incremental improvements to the flows and every once in a while make a quantum jump in productivity or design cycle reduction as we did with Xtreme."

He went on to say: "But if we really want to significantly improve the development process we must do things that improve design efficiencies and often these will take us beyond pure PCB design and into areas like mechanical design or manufacturing. Flomerics is an example where their products are used in the Mechanical domain, some specifically for the analysis of electronic products, some for other industries but again in the mechanical domain. So primarily, we bought Flomerics to further our electronic product development capabilities but as a design automation supplier, we will not limit ourselves to just the design of electronics. We now have a sales force that in familiar with and into the mechanical domain. Our computational fluid dynamics core software has application beyond electronics cooling and we will continue to sell and support that into markets that go beyond PCB related. "

Dan Boncella, Director of Marketing for the division described the dynamics of the new organization by stressing the correlation between the two organizations. "The current Flomerics sales force has a strong if not dominate foothold in the mechanical domain as it relates to the analysis of electronic products, i.e. the PCB in the enclosure with conduction and convection cooling: enclosure, fans, heatsinks, other cooling mechanisms,... They understand this market and have the appropriate contacts to continue to sell and support the customer. We will continue to use this sales force and have them coordinate with the EDA force when appropriate, i.e., a common customer , etc. Flomerics also has had a very strong marketing group, small but very productive. We will "Mentorize" the web site and collaterals but continue to depend on the strong and knowledgeable marketing organization to position the products, deal with the MCAD press, present at conferences, and so on."

John Isaac, Director of Systems market Development, described Mentor's understanding of the fluid dynamics market by stating that: "The application areas for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is quite broad but all can leverage a strong core engine which Flomerics has. As a primary focus in the past, Flomerics has a number one position in the electronics cooling market and entry products in two other segments that all use the same powerful engine. Ansys has a small presence in the electronics cooling market but a major one in the more general CFD market. In total, the CFD market is estimated to be about $450M."

I was curious to understand if the Systems Design Division saw any parallels in the way designs are created and implemented in the fluid dynamics design flow and some applications in the EDA flow. Henry Potts pointed out that: "Absolute parallels and as you can imagine, the building of the model can make or break both the accuracy and speed of the analysis. This is one of the strengths of the Flomerics CFD engine. They have some very intelligent algorithm developers (Phds) in Germany and Russia that have developed unique ways to break a physical entity (like a PCB in an enclosure or the inside of a water pump,...) into structures that represent it accurately yet won't require a Cray to perform the analysis. Today they dominate the electronics cooling market but as they expand into more general CFD markets in the Mechanical domain, this engine is proving to be a definite differentiator."

What Mentor is showing is that EDA companies are not condemned to remain in their traditional markets. BY looking at the appropriate opportunity, an EDA vendor can open new market opportunities, widen the revenue sources, an improve the opportunities of a more stable corporate growth.

September 30, 2008
A few words about standards
By Gabe Moretti

Everyone is in favor a good standards: and standards play a key role in the growth of EDA. Yet, not all standards are created equal, and IBM has decided that it wants to single out those standards making bodies that, in its view, "play fair". See the news at IBM Announces New Standards Policy. Of course, IBM is involved in many more industries than EDA, but it has played, and is playing, a key role in furthering development in EDA.

But, one may ask, if standards are good, why worry about how they got developed or how they are managed? Because if the process is not transparent and inclusive, one large company can in fact dominate the creation and contents of a standard. And what about management of standards? If not done properly, a standard could be arbitrarily modified or could fall into neglect.

EDA standards development: the past
In the pioneering days, yes I am talking about the '70s, there was little need for standardization, with the exception of schematic drawing interfaces. Thus the most famous standard, EDIF, was developed by a committee whose membership included both EDA vendors and users under the ANSI umbrella. The process worked well, most of the committee members learned a lot, and , as can be seen by its longevity, EDIF has been a success.

Then came the '80s and early 90's. Those were the maturing years, when the IEEE formed the DASC (Design Automation Standards Committee) and put in place the process, policies, and oversights very similar to those now asked by IBM of every standards body. VHDL is the most famous standard developed in those days. Cadence (why is it that they always need to be different?), went its own way and declared Verilog to be a standard, although it took Venk Shukla to see the error and form Open Verilog International (OVI) to give the language at least a flimsy appearance of openness. OVI would fail the present IBM test because the standard was controlled by Cadence and the rest of the OVI members were in fact not much more than a users group. Of course OVI was not alone in mudding the standards waters. VHDL International (VI) contributed to the confusion by forming as a VHDL promoter organization, which some people confused as a standard making organization because its members did work to justify the creation of other standards in support of VHDL. VI would also fail the present IBM test, because it did not have the mechanism to create and maintain a standard. But VI and OVI were a very good prototype for the organizations that today are responsible for the majority of EDA standards: the feeder organizations.

The present
The IEEE has taken a strong central role in the development of standards, both for EDA and other electronics industries, and the vast majority of EDA standards today have either been developed within the IEEE or are managed and maintained by the IEEE. As I said before, all standards developed within the IEEE do conform to the IBM requirements.

But only a small part of EDA standards are fully developed within the DASC. In most cases, another organization, called a feeder organization, identifies the need and begins the work to develop a new standard. Once the work is mature enough to produce a document that describes a proposed standard, all rights are offered to the DASC or other pertinent IEEE bodies. If the IEEE determines that the proposed standard is needed it will then accept the work and proceed to refined it, insure openness, and proceed to balloting, and if approved, management of the standard. Many feeder organizations are US based, although the European electronic Chips and Systems design Initiative (ECSI) in Europe and Japan's Electronics and Information Technologies Industries Association (JEITA) EDA/TC, are also instrumental in standards work.

When I think of organizations who develop proposed standards and then pass them on to the IEEE for final standardization and maintenance, I think of Accellera, OSCI, and SPIRIT. Accellera was formed almost ten years ago by merging OVI and VI and expanding the mission to include not just hardware description languages, but all aspects of EDA design. OSCI and SPIRIT are younger than Accellera, but have practically the same procedures when it comes to standards development. All three develop standards which, in most cases are then offered to the IEEE for final standardization and for maintenance. As feeder organizations they must maintain the inclusiveness, openness, and governance rules of the IEEE in order to have their standards accepted. The IEEE, in turn, works with both ANSI and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to market and maintain the standard worldwide. Most people in the EDA industry do not know that in many countries you cannot call something a standard unless it is an IEC standard.

Some of you might have noticed the SI2 is not on the list of IEEE feeder organizations. This is not an accident, it is by design. Although and SI2 standard could become an IEEE standard, the process would be different than in the case of the other three organizations mentioned before. The reason is that the process of developing and maintaining an SI2 standard is not open in the IEEE, and IBM, semantics.

The fundamental problem is that since SI2 derives income from its standards, like OpenAccess for example, it maintains the ownership of copyrights and trademarks of its standards and controls and maintains the standard according to its own internal rules which are not compliant with the rules of the IEEE, the IEC, ANSI, or, for that matter, the IBM requirements just made public. In its procedures, SI2 is not malicious or wrong: just different. It serves the interest of its member companies, as it should. In the case of OpenAccess, it is in the interest of Cadence to insure that changes to that standards are approved by Cadence, or it could find itself in the awkward position of having the majority of its tools become not compliant with its own standard. For this reason, SI2 standards are to be considered "de facto standard" or proprietary conventions. But they cannot be called standards since they lack the openness and independent oversight of IEEE, ANSI, or IEC standards.

The EDA industry should welcome the IBM posture since it will strengthen both the development and the maintenance process of its standards. The position of IBM clarifies, not modifies, its method by which it will contribute to various industries in the future.
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September 22, 2008
PCB West: a brief encounter
By Gabe Moretti

Although much of the EDA glory continues to go to IC designers, the PCB sector continues to offer interesting challenges to designers. As with IC's, Printed Circuit Boards are getting smaller and faster. They, like the ICs they carry, must also operate at lower power levels. The result is that PCB designers and IC designers have additional constraints in common: manufacturing costs are getting higher, ECOs are costlier to implement, and market pressures are just the same: after all the ICs and the board on which they sit, are an indivisible team.

But there are differences. While the emphasis of DAC, the premier conference for IC designers, is on the future, exploring new ideas and technologies, the focus of the PCB conference is on solving today' s problems and to educate designers. You will not find refereed papers at the PCB conferences. You will find workshops and panels presenting solutions to problems faced in the current design environment. The focus is the working engineer, not the researcher.

I attended a panel with the title of: IC-Package-PCB Co-Design Strategies. After hearing the presentation I am sure that many IC designers should also have been in the audience. Too many of them, in my experience, concentrate on the die without any considerations to the fact that what goes on within the silicon must be used by the electronics surrounding it. And let's not forget that electronics is only one aspect of reality: mechanical and environmental effects also play a critical role in whether or not your nice silicon design will actually work.

The exhibits
As with all smaller conferences, the exhibit floor is not as eye catching as DAC's. The booths are mostly built with a hanging backdrop, require visitors to stand in the aisle, and are staffed by few people, often only one or two. Walking the floor at the PCB conference you will find that the majority of vendors are PCB design contractors and PCB manufacturer, not EDA vendors. I wonder why at DAC one no longer sees FPGA vendors and, with the exception of the Common Platform, foundries. And whatever happened to fabless semiconductor vendors?

What may surprise a few, is that I counted eight vendors of EDA tools on the floor at PCB West. And another six had a presence at the conference. Talking to a number of executives of EDA companies in Silicon Valley that week, I did not find anyone who was current with the state of the PCB market. The segment is considered small, low margin, and dominated by Mentor and Cadence.

Speaking of Cadence, I now have established a trend, one, I must say, that is quite strange. As most of you by now know, or should know, Cadence has decided that CDNLive! is the only show that is worthy of the Cadence brand. So, if you are a customer, or you get a special invitation, you can see demos and hear papers about Cadence's tools. If you are not one of the chosen, you will have to look for your rapture someplace else.

"Yes, but" say the Cadence sales people. What about expanding the market? Since the Cadence brand cannot be soiled by mixing with competitors, gents of lower class, we need a stealth carrier. So next time you are at a show and want to see Cadence's products, look for the EMA booth. EMA is the distributor of Orcad products, a line that Cadence purchased a few years ago. So I would expect to see Orcad products in the booth. What I did not expect was a demo of Allegro and other Cadence products, not sold by EMA, in the same booth. Next July at DAC you will find the Cadence, oops I am sorry, the EMA booth, next to Springsoft and Mentor. Go figure

The other company that was a surprise at PCB West was Zuken. They also did not have a corporate booth, but you would have been fooled if you walked by the booth of Tropical PCB Design Services, since the large sign on their backdrop read: Zuken. Of course, being there in quasi stealth mode is better than not being there. The participants of the panel I talked about before were employees of Altium, Agilent Technologies, AWR, and Magma Design Automation. All four sell tools for the PCB design community and none of them had a presence on the exhibit floor.

Whether this is a new way of saving money, an oversight on their parts, or just poor selling on the part of the conference organizers I do not know.
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September 15, 2008
Magma: a mirror on EDA
By Gabe Moretti

Magma: a mirror on EDA Last week Dylan McGrath wrote an interesting article on the problems facing Magma Design Automation. You can find it at Analysis: What's wrong with Magma?. Both Gary Smith and Roy Jewell, Magma's President and Chief Operating Officer, point out that semiconductor companies are not willing to purchase EDA tools on the basis of expected requirements. In spite of the optimism expressed by a few CEOs of EDA companies, Wally Rhines comes to mind, the demand for EDA tools with high license prices, and thus delivering the greatest profit margin, is softening and will not increase in the short term. Thus companies like Magma who depend on selling licenses for RTL to GDSII tools, will find it hard to sustain much revenue growth.

Although it is true that demand for electronic products, by an ever increasing consumer population in Asia, will keep the growth of end user markets at a healthy rate, the vast majority of those products will be lower end products that do not require the use of the latest silicon manufacturing technologies. As a consequence semiconductor companies will continue to be conservative in their purchases, while the technical problems to be solved by EDA vendors will increase in difficulty.

In the same article, Rich Valera, an analyst at Needham & Co., observes that Magma customers using Blast Fusion and later Talus products, used to enjoy as much as a six months advantage in delivering their designs to production over their competitors. But he says, the advantage is fading. Gary Smith agrees that the gap, not surprisingly, as narrowed, by he believes that the same customers still have a two or three months advantage. Given that many electronic products today have a market life of nine months, it seems to me that three months is still a very desirable advantage.

Obviously the EDA market, that has always been very competitive and price sensitive, is becoming even more so, and the poor financial results reported by Cadence, Magma, and Mentor reflect it. I agree with the need to expand in new markets, Magma has just entered the analog and mixed/signal markets with what seems to be well accepted products. But I think that all EDA companies are being too parochial in limiting themselves to EDA. Design Automation is a much larger market, covering a number of disciplines with problems similar to those faced by electronics engineers. What ever happened to thinking outside the box?
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