Essential Electronic Design Automation (EDA)

EDA Tool Development Sources

Nora:

So who develops EDA tools?

Frank:

Some tools start as a university student's Master's or PhD thesis. Many of the ideas come from the professor, but the students do most of the work. A few semesters of thesis work is enough to prove the feasibility (or not) of an idea. It may take contributions by several students over a few years. However, the actual university software code is rarely ready for production use. Later, the graduate or others may develop the software into a production tool. (A production tool is well-documented, exhaustively tested, user-friendly, stable, and benchmarked against other tools.) Small EDA startup companies develop some tools. These companies may be a spin-off from a university or from ...