Last month, I wrote a blog describing the “Top Ten Guidelines for Successful Collaboration”, and received some very supportive email responses suggesting that I continue the topic but explore it further. In particular, I was asked to expand on “why collaboration in EDA standards seems to be non-existent”. So, I’d like to discuss the specific challenges that impact the EDA world (this idea from an EDA CEO, mind you), though it really spans our entire design enablement eco-system.

Here is the symptom: EDA has two primary competitors upon which the rest of the eco-system seems to routinely divide, split into two “camps” that cause sustained pain for users, partners, and even EDA’s own eco-system. Examples of this are not hard to find: library formats, design rule formats, high-level HDLs, verification libraries, low-power formats, etc. My email associate cited an ever-present duopoly even where a single standard would seem a clear logical choice. Critics state that this is a sign of an immature industry that fails to grow its market; others note that at least two is far better than five, ten (or none).

So, why does EDA repeat this bad habit, arguably to its own detriment? First of all, the market for EDA tools is in fact highly inelastic, i.e. it is very difficult to create more designers by lowering prices or increasing features, especially in the high-stakes silicon arena. EDA competes in a largely saturated market (with the exception of emerging technology niches). Second, much EDA software has a low barrier to entry by new entrants, or by large EDA customers. This low barrier caps its selling price point, which is the alternative of large customers returning to in-house development (which has higher NRE but lower RE). Third, EDA has developed some “bad habits” in the handling of its business model, often losing what little leverage it has in negotiations just to close a deal in a given quarter. Fourth, EDA has continued to lose clout to more powerful and concentrated market forces – those who actually create the silicon, for example. All of these forces put EDA into a defensive posture, using anything in its arsenal to defend against a transition to a competitor – and that includes formats and standards. This is a natural reaction to these circumstances.

In EDA’s defense, there are times when multiple simultaneous, proprietary approaches are the right business decision, in spite of the lofty goals of collaboration. This can occur when a format becomes tightly linked to a (proprietary) tool algorithm or internal data structure, or when a new tool needs to blaze its own trail with a new (unstable) format.

The real problem for EDA, and for EDA’s customers, is that boundary lines are poorly defined. We hear phrases like “collaborate on standards, compete on tools”, but for EDA formats, languages, and libraries that are at times tightly intertwined with their algorithms (and thus value proposition), this is easier said than done. The fact that everyone in the supply chain may “lose” more shared market opportunity as a result of divergent formats is rarely considered.

I think we can and should do better, but it’s unrealistic to expect EDA to define clear boundaries for itself. Customers must share a large part of the burden here, because for all the talk of common standards, they do not consistently prioritize collaborative results and common standards, for the good of the larger industry, over other immediate needs. The main reason EDA appears worse at collaboration than other industries is due to a perfect storm of reinforcing market forces. The only solution to this is a new, stronger market force – consistent purchasing priorities of EDA’s customer base.