Will DFM become part of semiconductor manufacturing equipment ecosystem?

Things could get really interesting, really quickly for EDA DFM startups if the news yesterday from KLA-Tencor is any indication of things to come.

The capital equipment supplier is going after the same market as a number of startups in the EDA space with a new lithography optimization tool.

We’ve already seen other indicators that DFM may be pulled more into the manufacturing end of things with the acquisition of Brion Technologies by capital equipment giant ASML.

Also, KLA had been working closely with Aprio, which merged with Blaze DFM earlier this year – I wonder how that relationship is going today.

Interestingly, there is a similar dynamic occurring in the test space. National Instruments has been making a huge push with its Labview tool to “create a development environment that can do both: design and the test that goes with it,” as NI president, CEO and co-founder Dr. James Truchard told me during a roundtable at last year’s Design Automation Conference.

With DAC attendance numbers on the steady decline, while Semicon organizers predict 40,000 attendees for the show in July, I think more consolidation is due.

What do you think? Comments always welcome.

–Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor