EDA users desperately need innovation, deep investments in technology, and supplier cooperation. Industries with closed standards almost always fail. Remember how the VMS/Aegis operating systems and Tegas/Hilo simulators fell from their market position, to be replaced by todayýs Unix/NT and HDL standards?

When you need the best products, you donýt commit your entire budget to a discount supplierýeven if you can afford to fill your shopping cart with anything from the inventory. I bought cheap discount store screwdrivers in the past, and when they broke after the first use I had to buy more. I should have bought the name-brand guaranteed tools, even though they were a little more expensive up front.

Similarly, to get to SOCs, you canýt rely on the generalistýs tool. You need to bring in selected verification experts who can provide new solutions that can go deeper and give you better results.

Where do these large one-stop shopping EDA vendors usually acquire their leading edge technologies? Only rarely do they develop internal technology and sell it successfully to the marketplace. In fact, several of the largest EDA vendors have built their entire kingdoms upon the foundation of one or two successful point tools that they originally obtained by acquiring start-ups.

Remember the vendors who tried to push EDIF in the pre-EDA days of CAE? Ironically, these vendors could only read in other EDIF libraries, but could never write them back out. How many of you can allow yourselves to get locked into a sole source technology provider today? Designers will always need specialized tools and capabilities that only new expert sources provide. No one vendor will ever enjoy the technology lead in every area. In fact, your best gains come from selecting expert sources willing to work with you and your existing suppliers in cooperative ways.

Even the HDL industry standards include their share of non-standard choices that limit tool interaction.

Although the VHDL standard was crystal clear, early vendors failed to embrace a standard for signal data or tool interoperability. Verilog gained market share and strength from its VCD and PLI standards, thus allowing others to expand upon its baseline. Yet even Verilog suppliers delivered their share of non-standard capabilities. Consequently, non-standard HDL extensions and new languages have emerged because of shortcomings in the existing standards. Now the market is drowning in proprietary solutions.

Some EDA vendors have taken their previously open data formats off the market and declared ownership rights to block others from using themýeven though owing their initial success to openness. Granted, in some cases the standardization arose from accidental openness, such as ASCII formats that a vendor converted to binary for compression.

EDA market growth is not a factor of the customerýs problems, as many of the ýold schoolý EDA players have tried to claim for years. Itýs ridiculous when an EDA vendor blames their problems on their customersýa sign of weak leadership, ego over matter, lack of Business 101 education, or all the above. A market grows only with openness and cooperation. Look at the examples in other markets. Networking, for instance, took off once a critical mass of suppliers agreed on standards. Itýs now time to look at the companies who work together, providing a sum thatýs greater than its parts.