Gary Smith, chief EDA analyst with Gartner Dataquest, said that for the first time, users in 2002 will spend more on interoperability than on tools. However, the data to support his claim is based on a "Scientific Wild Ass Guess" (Swag) study, Smith admitted, because only one study has been conducted on interoperability — a 1994 report produced by analyst Ron Collett.

"In 1990, 11 percent of user time was spent making tools work together. But in 2002 you will be spending more money on getting tools to work together than you will be spending on acquiring tools," Smith said.

Smith's study may actually be generous — users have said that for every dollar they spend on EDA licenses, they spend 2 to 10 times that on making them interoperable.

Smith's Swag also shows that EDA tool cost and the percentage of expenditure on design is actually declining, from 35 percent in 1990 to 31 percent for 2001.

"The immediate reaction from EDA vendors seeing this survey is to say, 'Yes, users aren't spending enough money on our tools,'" said Smith. "But it really means EDA vendors are not bringing as much to the party as they were in 1990. Therefore, the impact on productivity when compared to work done on costs suggests that the EDA community is doing a 4 percent poorer job on solving the design iteration problem than they were in 1990."

Yet panelists remained optimistic that the tool interoperability war can still be won through participation in open-source standards efforts and broad adoption of open-source standards such as Linux.

Panelists included noted open-source licensing guru and senior global strategist for OpenSource at Hewlett-Packard Bruce Perens, Synopsys vice president of strategic market development Rich Goldman, and Open SystemC chairman and Cadence Design Systems vice president of business operations Stan Krolikoski all outlined how open-sourcing can be effective in creating viable and fair standards that address the interoperability problem.

Parens urged industry to participate in and only tolerate true open-source efforts. Doing so, said Parens, allows several sources to participate in quickly creating standards that will be more agreeable to all parties and more responsive as needs change.

Goldman and Krolikoski outlined open-source efforts under way in EDA such as lef/def, Liberty (.lib), OpenVera and Open SystemC. Goldman noted that Open Access API should also go in this direction.

Krolikoski noted that Synopsys has now donated the Open SystemC license and, it appears, total control of Open SystemC to the OSCI effort.

Meanwhile, panelist Greg Spirakis, director of design technology at Intel Corp., demonstrated how Intel reduced the costs of running verification (workstation utilization on 700 machines) by adopting Linux. According to Spirakis, logic simulation in his group consumed 80 percent of his group's compute time and cost $30 million. He reported that costs to run the 700 workstations running on Linux now cost $5.6 million, while the move provided a 2x performance increase over the Unix system.

"But on the bad side, it took us a whole month to port to Linux," jested Spirakis, who said that the company is overjoyed in the $24.4 million savings and 2x performance improvement that came from the adoption of Linux — the product of an open-source effort.