Compaq joins EDA Consortium

Electronic News, Jan 12, 1998 by Ann Steffora

Houston -- In a move that surprised a few, but welcomed by most as a sign of validation for the electronic design automation (EDA) industry, the EDA Consortium announced that Compaq Computer has become a non-voting member, making it the first Windows NT workstation provider to join the consortium.

The consortium does not currently recruit workstation providers and was approached by Compaq, which ranks as the top Windows NT workstation provider in 3Q97, according to Dataquest market research. "Compaq very aggressively sought us out," notes EDAC chairman Walden C. Rhines, who is also president and CEO of Mentor Graphics.

New licenses for EDA tools in North America on the DOS and Windows platform outpaced new Unix licenses in 2Q97, according to EDAC's Market Statistics Service.

"This is a significant commitment by a major 'Wintel' vendor with the EDA industry, which has been needed for a long time," says Rita Glover, president and principal analyst at EDA Today, a Phoenix-based market research firm.

From Compaq's point of view, which happens to be a big EDA tool user for internal printed circuit board (PCB) and ASIC design activity, the computer maker felt it would be beneficial to be a member of EDAC not only to develop better products, but to develop relationships in the industry, admits Giri Iyer, manager of EDA segment marketing for Compaq workstation marketing.

"As Compaq actively migrates its internal EDA tools to the Windows NT platform, we can provide good solid learning experience and work with EDA vendors product by product and application by application, to give feedback on how to make the products better," Mr. Iyer says.

The only skepticism may be due to Compaq's reputation as "an aggressive company with a voracious appetite for increasing its revenues," explains Pete Heller, consultant with EDA consulting firm Collett International in Santa Clara, Calif. However, Compaq will only have a positive influence on the consortium because it will play an increasing important role in EDA as a hardware provider, he says.

When asked if pursuing other non-EDA companies is part of EDAC's strategy, Dr. Rhines said, "It hasn't been said outright...however, it is well within EDAC guidelines," and he expects other Windows NT workstation vendors to join as well. Consortium bylaws have always included provisions for non-EDA companies to be non-voting, associate members, confirms EDAC's executive director, Pamela Parrish.

Dr. Rhines also notes that five years ago, Mentor Graphics mandated that all new product development going forward would run on both Windows and Unix platforms. As well, Mentor has ported all of its legacy product to the Windows NT platform, which not only brings hardware costs down for customers, but enables users of either platform to share libraries, Dr. Rhines says.

And other EDA vendors are following the same lead. Cadence Design Systems, for instance, expects to have all of its software tools ported to NT by about the year 2000. Currently, all its PCB and logic synthesis tools run on the NT platform.

Overall, the EDA industry seems to be aware of the benefit of Compaq's membership in EDAC, including Prakash Bhalerao, CEO of synthesis tool provider Ambit Design Systems. "EDA technology is becoming increasingly critical to system, and now system-on-silicon design. By joining EDAC, Compaq is validating the increasing importance of EDA for new product development. We welcome their input and work to drive the industry forward," Mr. Bhalerao says.