Complaining only hurts the industry and such comments as, "This industry cannot support 250 companies," from Aart deGeus, Synopsys' chief executive officer, discourage venture capital investment in EDA.

Many EDA players appear jealous of the dot-com and networking industries, though the overvalued dot-coms have seen stock values adjust to reality, and networking stocks have also begun their adjustments. Many companies have tried to position themselves as non-EDA players. Both Numeritech and Synplicity claimed to be in some other industry-not EDA-in their recent IPO filings. Synopsys and Avanti teamed up on a virtual IC design shop to grab Internet hype.

EDA companies must stop complaining and find ways to improve their industry. After all, we make chip design possible. All chips are implemented and verified using EDA tools. Computers, cell phones and all of the other gadgets we enjoy would not be possible without EDA innovations over the last 10 years.

EDA has made mistakes. In the 1980s, some companies sold products before a line of code was written, creating an environment in which customers do not trust claims and force extensive and expensive benchmarking and evaluations.

EDA does not cooperate on standards. We force end users to solve integration problems between different tools. Large EDA companies prevent competitors from participating in their relationship programs. This exclusion only hurts our industry and our customers. Instead, Partner Programs should welcome any EDA vendor into the program-including direct competitors-without erecting artificial barriers or prohibitive licensing agreements. Competition is healthy!

Past business models did not help EDA companies. Perpetual licenses created no predictable revenue stream, and no financing for tool enhancements, since all new features were given away. The flexible access model-based licenses eroded financial analysts' confidence. Perhaps a better approach is time-based licensing, ensuring consistent revenue while helping financing additional feature development.

EDA spends too much time dreaming up the next big thing instead of fulfilling customers' needs. One designer derided the wave of higher-level languages designed to replace those at the register-transfer level, calling them "solutions looking for a problem."

EDA has invested in academically interesting areas with large marketing budgets but delivered products of little value.

Let's stop complaining and take EDA to a new level. Let's work together to solve our customers' problems.

Karen Vahtra is Product Marketing Manager and Co-founder of Magma Design Automation Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.).