Device exec: high EDA costs but no solutions

Electronic News, June 26, 1995 by Walter Andrews

SAN FRANCISCO -- Design tool companies are failing to provide device manufacturers with the solutions needed to enter the deep-submicron age, even though they're charging higher prices and device companies are being forced to make their own design tools, a senior semiconductor executive said.

Bill McCaffrey, product development manager for Advanced Micro Devices' PC Products division, said: "My comment to the EDA (electronic design automation) industry is basically they provide yesterday's solutions for tomorrow's problems at a higher price."

The executive, who is in charge of developing AMD's new K5 microprocessor, made his comments during a technical session on deep-submicron design challenges at the recent Design Automation Conference (DAC).

Asked to comment on Mr. McCaffrey's charge, Jim Hogan, Cadence Design Systems' VP of IC practices, said: "Yeah, we charge a lot of money for our software but probably not enough" to support the R&D needed. He suggested the formation of an EDA consortium similar to the semiconductor industry's Sematech.

Asked after the formal session to elaborate on his remarks, Mr. McCaffrey told Electronic News: "The problem there is that (a consortium is) not driven enough by time-to-market and time-to-market is what drives a lot of these solutions."

He said the EDA companies "don't get tied in early enough in the design phase. Part of that is design responsibility in that we don't talk about our problems until they're really staring us in the face. But other times when we do predict the problems, the EDA industry doesn't see the need widespread. They don't have a whole lot of customers and so they are very reluctant to spend R&D dollars into an area that isn't widespread and they see an automatic market."

Mr. McCaffrey said EDA companies need to go out and form partnerships with device manufacturers in advancing the state of the art in design tools.

"There are a few key EDA people that are coming out right now and are taking a different approach and saying look we're going to partner with a high-end person so that we develop something that will live longer that's valuable to them that day but might be usable in the ASIC world for five years to come. There are some improvements going on there but it takes a commitment from the EDA vendor to make that investment up front and they usually don't want to make that investment until they see a big enough market so that they can predict the revenue stream."

Because of the failure of the EDA companies, Mr. McCaffrey said, device manufacturers are having to design more tools themselves, partly because of a lack of standards. "The tools (of different EDA companies) don't communicate. So you must draw out your own data exchange formats and deal with the problem yourself. The other thing is there are so many gaps in the methodology. The EDA vendors have their own idealistic view of the design methodology. But a design methodology is married to the tools that are used on it. And if you're using a lot of mixed tools, then one vendor isn't going to be able to really understand your design methodlogy. They don't want to understand the competitive tools that you're using. That in itself is a big part of the problem."

He said these problems are becoming more apparent because of the complexities being encountered as device manufacturers move into the development of chips with deep-submicron features.

"The reason being is it seems the complexities that we are dealing with today are growing exponentially. It's not a nice linear thing where you're just on a slow ramp and you gradually improve your technology. Designs are a quadrupling in size, quadrupling in frequency and so are the problems that go along with it."

On EDA companies saying they don't have enough money for the necessary R&D, Mr. McCaffrey said: "That's another reason to partner with the high-end people...we'll spend the money. We've always spent the money. It's not so much a problem of what the money is. It's a fact that if they sell me a tool that doesn't fully meet my needs and yet they want to charge more money year to year to year without really enhancing the tool, that's what I have a problem with."

He added: "We are spending the money with the people that prove they will really partner with us at the right level."

Mr. McCaffrey accused some large EDA companies of failing to improve their tools and using them as "cash cows."

"I would have to say that Cadence is the worst at it. They buy technology and try to remarket it for years to come until somebody else outdoes them...For example: they just milked the Dracula tool. They rarely ever did anything substantial to improve the tool. I don't use those tools anymore."

Asked to comment on Mr. McCaffrey's remarks, Jim Douglas, Cadence VP of product marketing, said: "Certainly, companies like Cadence are making substantial investment in leading-edge technologies and that can be reflected by both our rate of product introduction and our overall rate of spending on R&D, which equals or outstrips everybody else in EDA."