Is EDA innovating enough?

4/9/2010 2:40 PM EDT

For the $1 Billion per annum that is being spent on R&D by EDA, how much of it is incremental improvement of existing products versus daring exploration of new ones? Is university research and tech transfer counted in that number?

And as Oasys and others show, past and present, start-ups have been at the center of innovation. But start-ups have been faced with a venture capital freeze in the past couple of years, with only one IPO that I'm aware of (Magillem in late 2009) and a credit crunch causing no acquisitions during 2008-2009 (between the Mentor acquisition of Lighthouse, creators of inFact verification, and the recent VaST, VirtuTech and CoWare acquisitions ... what?). So EDA has been at a standstill with most of them following an enterprise software model (works for Oracle, SAP, CA but no longer EDA). It isn't just consolidation by customers but also fragmentation (e.g., ST-Ericsson). Mergers lead to new contracts less than the sum of the two previous deals. Fragmentation leads to smaller customers who can only afford few licenses at less favorable pricing. With a revenue crunch, acquisitions that advance an EDA major's portfolio aren't happening and with a lack of such exits, VC's look elsewhere.

4/14/2010 11:02 AM EDT

I'm really not sure what you are getting at. You talk about the need for the industry to do more innovation, then say they are spending 25 percent of it's revenue on R&D (not sure where you get that number, though.) Then you intimate that the industry hasn't delivered a major product category in years, then you select three product categories that represent 90 percent of industry's current efforts -- verification, P&R and synthesis (which amazingly are the three categories Oasys is addressing, along with 90 percent of the industry).
Most industry watchers -- whoever is left -- identify systems as the primary area needing innovation but the customers are screaming that what they really need is a hard reduction in their costs. Some companies, like Magma and Marseilles Networks are working toward innovation that does exactly that, so do we really need innovation in areas where the problem is solved or in areas that the industry has ignored?

4/15/2010 1:23 PM EDT

Innovation in electronic design automation relies on the data density of the atomic topological function used to model the pico/femtoscale structures and interactions of key electrons, energy, and force fields exactly. Recent advancements in quantum science have produced the picoyoctometric, 3D, interactive video atomic model imaging function, in terms of chronons and spacons for exact, quantized, relativistic animation. This format returns clear numerical data for a full spectrum of variables. The atom's RQT (relative quantum topological) data point imaging function is built by combination of the relativistic Einstein-Lorenz transform functions for time, mass, and energy with the workon quantized electromagnetic wave equations for frequency and wavelength.

The atom labeled psi (Z) pulsates at the frequency {Nhu=e/h} by cycles of {e=m(c^2)} transformation of nuclear surface mass to forcons with joule values, followed by nuclear force absorption. This radiation process is limited only by spacetime boundaries of {Gravity-Time}, where gravity is the force binding space to psi, forming the GT integral atomic wavefunction. The expression is defined as the series expansion differential of nuclear output rates with quantum symmetry numbers assigned along the progression to give topology to the solutions.

Next, the correlation function for the manifold of internal heat capacity energy particle 3D functions is extracted by rearranging the total internal momentum function to the photon gain rule and integrating it for GT limits. This produces a series of 26 topological waveparticle functions of the five classes; {+Positron, Workon, Thermon, -Electromagneton, Magnemedon}, each the 3D data image of a type of energy intermedon of the 5/2 kT J internal energy cloud, accounting for all of them.

Those 26 energy data values intersect the sizes of the fundamental physical constants: h, h-bar, delta, nuclear magneton, beta magneton, k (series). They quantize atomic dynamics by acting as fulcrum particles. The result is the exact picoyoctometric, 3D, interactive video atomic model data point imaging function, responsive to keyboard input of virtual photon gain events by relativistic, quantized shifts of electron, force, and energy field states and positions. This system also gives a new equation for the magnetic flux variable B, which appears as a waveparticle of changeable frequency.

Images of the h-bar magnetic energy waveparticle of ~175 picoyoctometers are available online at http://www.symmecon.com with the complete RQT atomic modeling manual titled The Crystalon Door, copyright TXu1-266-788. TCD conforms to the unopposed motion of disclosure in U.S. District (NM) Court of 04/02/2001 titled The Solution to the Equation of Schrodinger.

4/21/2010 6:09 PM EDT

Sanjiv,
Great article. Agree with you that Verification and especially simulation run times remains a growing challenge - probably always will be! However, we've (@Jasper) been working with customers to verify RTL as it's being developed with our formal ActiveDesign tool (speaking of "innovations" :o) And that's just part of the power of formal our customers are experiencing every day - in fact, they are running nearly five years ahead of the ITRS roadmap for formal analysis results. What we promise, and what we deliver, is real, measurable ROI for our tools - we can't do that without continuous improvement and innovation.

Thanks,
Alok