Knowing where the bread is buttered

Just last week, we gave a nod to Ed Sperling for realizing that there were bright spots in the EDA market, many of which center on FPGAs and retargetable IP blocks. Seems the EDA players realize where their future will reside. Anne-Francoise Pele reported in EE Times March 23 that Cadence Design Systems has acquired a small specialist, Taray Inc., that integrates FPGAs into a printed circuit board design flow.

Cadence already had used elements of Taray’s 7Circuits FPGA pin-assignment software within its Allegro/OrCAD suite. Once the acquisition is complete, Taray will become part of that PCB and packaging group. Pele quoted Keith Felton, Cadence’s group director for OrCAD and Allegro tools, as saying “we are seeing more people turning to FPGAs than trying to develop ASICs or SoCs themselves. So we saw that as a good sign that FPGA is becoming more of a decision criterion for companies purchasing PCB software."

Well, yeah. No disagreement from this quarter, Mr. Felton. The only question is whether and if Cadence, Mentor and Synopsys have to start offering ASIC-based tools as blue-light specials. The ASIC may not be dead, but the broader acceptance of FPGAs in a variety of high-performance, high-integration applications certainly is hastening the ASIC day of reckoning.