Large chipmakers still developing EDA tools
By Ed Sperling, Editor in Chief and Ann Mutschler, Senior Editor -- EDN, June 6, 2007
A gap between the capabilities of commercially available EDA tools and the needs of designers working on leading-edge chips is propelling large chip vendors to continue developing their own tools.
Executives at companies such as Broadcom, Qualcomm and eSilicon complained openly at this week’s Design Automation Conference about the inability of commercially available tools to do such things as architecture exploration, tradeoffs for power, performance and yield, and automated power optimization. EDA vendors respond they are working furiously to solve those issues, and even though problems exist, the number of tools developed in-house by chip vendors is decreasing because of the enormous difficulty of integrating them into complex design flows.
While that may be true at some companies, the largest chipmakers still see proprietary tools as both a necessity and a competitive advantage.
“IBM has 25 years of history, and continues to invest in proprietary EDA tools,” said Tom Reeves, VP of semiconductor and technology services at IBM. “The largest single category is timing. So we’ve moved from static timing tools first in the industry to silicon variation-aware timing, and today we are still the only company offering a full statistical timing approach for sign-off. It’s paying very good dividends for results. In addition, we have secondary tools that I’ll put in the categories of noise awareness, noise avoidance, power management, place and route, and test generation. So we have a secondary list of areas we make investment in.”
IBM doesn’t plan to sell the tools on the open market the way companies such as Mentor Graphics, Synopsys, Cadence and Magma now do. In fact, it bills those tools as a reason to sign up for IBM’s broader development services, citing successful development programs with all three of the largest gaming platforms—the Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii—as well as AMD’s x86 development.
“Since day one back in the mid-1990s, we’ve made all of these tools available as part of our ASIC deliverable,” said Reeves. “Clients doing IBM ASICs have access to all of these tools as part of that flow. Selectively, we will do design consulting or turnkey design service work using all of these tools, which is true of all three gaming projects and others, including design consulting on AMD x86.”
Freescale likewise sees value in developing at least some of its own tools. Magdy Abadir, manager for EDA strategy and vendor relations for Freescale's tools and methodologies, said the company buys most of its EDA tools from a few select third party suppliers, but approximately one-third to one-fourth of its tools are developed in-house. The company also works very closely with its vendors of choice in developing new commercial tools, but the ones done internally address specific technological aspects unique to Freescale that don’t make sense for the EDA providers to participate on, he said.
Sources say Intel also has a commitment to developing its own tools to improve yield and reduce the time it takes to turn out chips. Intel could not be reached for comment by press time.
