The design automation industry's growth has been constrained in great part by the electronics industry's slower-than-expected movement to both 90-nanometer design and a higher level of design abstraction, both of which will bring significant investment in new EDA software products. To effectively surmount the complexity issues at 130 and 90 nm, there must be a corresponding move up a notch in design abstraction. EDA vendors that can demonstrate measurable productivity improvements at higher levels of abstraction will experience substantial growth during 2004 and for the next several years.

The critical components enabling the electronics industry's move to the next design abstraction level are a viable language, simulation and synthesis. These factors are identical to those that enabled the last move in abstraction, from gate-level to RTL design, in the late '80s and early '90s. This year is bringing not only traction for SystemC as a high-level design language, but also acceptance of commercial SystemC simulation and behavioral synthesis technologies.

To generate more revenue, semiconductor and systems houses must produce new high-value products with more features for less cost. To accomplish this, productivity levels must again rise to meet the needs of a demanding market. Designers must find a way to manage costs while adding significantly more content with a team that is slightly larger than the year before.

As more and more design content makes its way into your cellular phone, MP3 player, set-top box and so on, engineering teams have to find a way to keep costs down. Unfortunately, the current "standard" method of designing ICs at the register-transfer level simply will not provide the productivity savings necessary to drive content up and costs down. It is time to invest in change.

Higher-level design tools allow design managers to better manage complexity, reduce design cycles, cut verification time and, ultimately, produce higher-quality designs by starting at a higher level of abstraction. In moving past RTL design by investing in behavioral design, many companies, especially in the exploding consumer electronics space, are cutting their design cycles in half while producing larger designs than ever before — and more of them.

While 2003 provided the general foundation for an electronics industry recovery, the focus for further recovery in 2004 will lie in addressing design complexity and in continued productivity improvements. A major investment area for the semiconductor industry will be front-end EDA products that provide significant productivity benefits, reduce design cycles and create better designs. As we look forward to the rest of 2004 and beyond, the winning semiconductor companies will be the ones that invest for the future, now.

Jacob Jacobsson, Chief Executive Officer, Forte Design Systems, San Jose, Calif.