EDAC CEO Forecast: 2% growth for EDA revenue in 2008? EDA blues or blue skies ahead?

I have yet to see ANY vendor produce a big customer that says ?we use only one vendors flow from front to back.? The only time I?ve EVER heard ?all-in-one-flows are what customers want? is from EDA vendors. Sure there may be some chip startup that had low to no budget and uses an all in flow that was largely comped to them, but I?ve never heard this preference from a big customer type. In fact, I?ve heard over and over and over again my entire career from those big users that what they really want is tool interoperability so they can use best of class tools from different vendors and (their own tools) in a flow. But the EDA vendors are not willing to go full bore on something like OA so a reasonably high performing interoperability platform (one that swaps files quickly between) still remains elusive. Instead, it sounds like users have to buy a bunch of different all-in-one flows and use the best in class functionality from those flows?instead of transferring files from tool to tool they now have to do it from flow to flow. It?s like going to a restaurant that only offers a prefix menu but in order to get the courses you really want you have to buy 4 entire different prefix dinners. Eat the appetizer from prefix one, eat the salad from prefix dinner 2, the entry from prefix dinner 3, and the dessert from prefix dinner 4?the rest of the meal feed it to your dog. You spend $400 dollars on a meal that should only cost $100. Wonder why the tool buyers are looking for bargains? I suspect that?s part of the reason. The other reason is that seemingly the EDA vendors are too willing to cave on price.

I thought it was interesting how many people talked about "best-in-class" flows vs. "all-you-can-eat" flows before any of the CEO's took exception to it. Eventually Fister made a mild defense talking about collaboration as a differentiator, but none of them said: "Hey wait a minute, I think our tools ARE best in class!" Has the best-in-class term come to mean a flow made up of point tools rather than the best tools available at each point in the flow?

Typically Wally?s the only one who makes a prediction at the event and I suspect the number he picks is heavily qualified by the same report referred to in my post above. In past years the event has been pretty much a dog and pony show. It isn?t like EDAC doesn?t know when these guys report and if they really wanted to make the panel a bit more meaningful, they could pick a date where none of the companies are in a quiet period. I missed last year?s event because the panel?s been historically long on EDA uberales and short on projections and deep discussions, but last year?s event was the first time in a long time where Aart wasn?t in a quiet period and folks actually came up with some numbers. Granted although this year?s event was short on predictions, it did have its interesting moments: Sanjay Srivastava?s presentation was funny and he basically called ESL a plant the industry?s been watering for seven years now and it isn?t growing into a tree (not sure it?s even a shrub). He suggested folks move to the next level: software for multicore. And Bourgoin did make somewhat of a prediction: he indicated that business would be weaker the first half and stronger the second half of the year. He didn?t speak too much after his presentation but he did note that MIPS is now really in two IP sectors. One is its traditional processor business and the other is its newly acquired analog IP business. He said MIPS recently announced weakening in the processor business is because processors are picked up front in the design process, and the weakness seemingly indicates users are hesitating on new projects because of the economy. He noted analog IP is traditionally used later in the process (the buying decision is later too) so it hasn?t been effected. I guess the big question is will it be? It?s interesting to note that a lot of analog IP goes into older processes so that may indicate the types of designs that are still moving forward. Kathryn Kranen was pretty upbeat too but I can?t recall ever seeing her downbeat. She noted the market is tough right now and there is quite a bit of pricing pressure in EDA and that?s even tougher for smaller EDA firms but she said she?s optimistic that the need for better verification (and her company?s tools, of course) will continue to increase. Ps I wonder if the report Wally referred to includes all the EDAC companies, including the ones that don?t report to EDAC but are counted in the numbers anyway? I wonder how adding or subtracting those co?s would influence the numbers?

2% growth for EDA in 2008 sounds reasonable to me. Look at the January effect in the stock market, the tech-heavy NASDAQ is down some 12% last month. Plus, an election year like 2008 is typically a down year for stocks in general. www.marketingeda.com

I don't think DAC picks the date Lou. EDAC does. We were discussing this yesterday at the DAC Technical Committee meeting in Broomfield, Colorado where the technical program for DAC was being assembled. Apparently the date is mutually agreed upon by finding a workable date in all of the CEO's calendars.

I've always wondered: Why doesn't DAC choose a date for this event that is outside the quiet periods for the leading companies? It seems it would take a minimum of coordination to pull something like that off.