Essential Electronic Design Automation (EDA)

Introduction

This chapter describes the business side of EDA. We explore the financial and market features, and where and how EDA tools are developed.

The business models are significant for understanding the EDA customers and how EDA companies make money. A healthy EDA industry is essential to the electronics industry, and vice versa.

The developers try to anticipate the designer's needs, but typically they are two years behind. This is not too surprising since the chip complexity and density continue to increase rapidly. Imagine the problems that architects would have if building sizes doubled every few years. In addition, the new chip technology brings new problems to light. It takes the IC engineers a long time to identify the problems needing ...