I Know What We Did This Summer

The electronics industry looks good after a tumultuous spring and summer.

by Tets Maniwa

Just like all of the school children going back to school, as we move into the fall we can look back into the events of the summer. We begin with the first assignment: "what I did this summer." Certainly the EDA industry landscape changed dramatically--about 50 new exhibitors showed up at the annual Design Automation Conference. At the same time, more than 20 companies became a part of other organizations. The large companies like Cadence, Synopsys, and Avanti continued to buy companies to adjust their product portfolios, while people left the big companies to start up new companies, sometimes in direct competition with their former employers.

DAC was interesting not only from the new company perspective, but also from the perspective of upcoming changes to the tools. The number of new products introduced that address the nanometer design issues indicated a growing awareness and, hopefully not belated, attempts to solve the ever-increasing design complexity problems. When semiconductor processes moved to 0.8 µm, the designer had to squeeze as much logic into the available space as possible; area use was the primary consideration. At the 0.5-µm process generation, the timing became an additional concern.

However, at the 0.25-µm range and below, the issues changed radically. Not only is timing a bigger problem--the ICs are now interconnect-delay dominated--but designers must address power, signal integrity, noise, metal migration, and thermal effects as well. They no longer focus on cramming as many transistors into a given area, but work instead on how to make all of the functions work together, especially given that 0.18-µm processes yield up to 40,000 transistors per mm ² . The new tools start from a more physical view of the design to reach final design convergence and to finish logical and functional design as soon as possible.

We will soon find out, not counting the appeals, just what the government will do about their claim that Microsoft is a monopoly. It's probably safe to make plans for new tools on the revised NT--aka Windows 2000--independently of the outcome. Gary Smith, EDA analyst at Dataquest, thinks this is irrelevant, because NT missed its market window last year. For the foreseeable future, the bulk of EDA tools will continue to run under Unix (and increasingly on Linux for those on Intel platforms). The money is still mostly in the Unix tools for ASICs, so Microsoft's New Technology operating system may become old hat (or Red Hat) as far as tool migration to other platforms is concerned.

The end of summer also sees the big push for product volume for fourth-quarter consumer sales. The consumer product vendors are already starting to load boards and test and ship systems for the winter holiday season. The good news is that Asia--where much of the production volume is handled--is doing robust business, which will propel the area out of the economic doldrums they have been in for the past two years. Because the big foundries and assembly houses have put a lot of their capacity expansion on hold for the past 18 months, we might see some short-term capacity shortages as the ASIC vendors and foundries work through the big volume backlogs going into the late fall. The good news is that a lot of capacity will be coming on-line by the end of the year, especially in the smaller process dimensions. The attention and interest in the capital manufacturing equipment was evident at the annual Semicon West show, where many attendees, especially those from Asia, were looking at the latest equipment and hearing about the next generation of processes.

As we get through the summertime blues, we see a rich and bountiful fall and winter quarter ahead. The EDA companies are growing in number and in total dollar sales, even as consolidation and changes in business models shake the foundations of the industry. The industry is looking for the best mix of tools and services, as new companies try to fill the holes in the design flows created by the increasing die capacities. The foundries and assembly houses seem to have made it through the Asian financial crisis and are moving toward a banner year, also fueling the growth of the semiconductor equipment companies. The stage is set for exciting times and challenges in the coming months.

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