Archive → April, 2010
Is the EDA Support Model Working?
When thinking of EDA, there are generally two areas that come to mind. The first is the design tool suppliers and the second is the internal support for customization. I also view a third being the end user, the design community itself. Tools are purchased from the supplier, customized and supported by internal EDA support and then are made available to the design community.
This is a traditional approach to EDA and one that is utilized broadly across most companies in the semiconductor industry. It’s historic, bureaucratic and I believe it’s lacking the productivity benefits the industry needs. Why? Simply because the design community does not have a full voting rights seat at the EDA table. This is partly of the designer’s own doing and in part because of organizational structure. How many designers attend the coveted Design Automation Conference?
The EDA support model is rather incestuous, isn’t it? Maybe we need more designer genes mixed into to the pool to provide proper balance and direction. I am curious what the design community has to say on the subject.
Here’s a question for all those designers out there – how’s the EDA support model working from your perspective? EDA types, please be very quiet whilst we here from the design community. They don’t speak very load, especially the analog designers, so we need to keep the volume low so we can here from them.
Designers – stand up and be heard by leaving a comment on your view of the situation. We are quietly waiting to hear from you.
Flow Customization is not Winning the Time to Revenue Battle
What’s the first thing that happens when a new tool becomes available, or even a new major revision is in the works? The discussion about how to “integrate” it into the way we do things commences – customization begins. Is there really only one right way for a tool flow and everyone else chooses the wrong way? I need a really good reason why we are unable to expect a tool to be ready for use out of the box? Why must everyone monkey with tool customizations to make it more right? What we need is freedom from customization!
Think about how much time is spent and wasted on chasing the ultimate, best in class super duper Pcell? There are two things that matter in chip development: 1) Designers must not be battling with tools and 2) The tools need to provide an answer that is good enough to prevent a silicon spin. It’s really pretty simple. If you can build a case for positive time to revenue impact based on diddling with design environment customizations, I would like to hear it. I maintain that tool flow customization negatively impacts time to revenue.
What tends to happen is all this customizing that goes on chasing the ultimate environment creates a maintenance nightmare. The need to make it better has created a headache for both the users and those doing the customization. The biggest complaint I hear from designers is that the tool flow often breaks unexpectedly. If they worked yesterday, why don’t they work today? Something changed, and that change was most likely precipitated by a need to be better somewhere along the flow.
Here’s what we should be able to do. Buy a copy of someone’s design tools, get the PDK from our FAB of choice, design without a hitch, tapeout and get silicon back that behaves the same as we verified in the tools, period; end of story. If that’s not happening there are only two things that could be broken, the tools you bought or the PDK. Get them fixed at the source! If you buy a new car do you hire a team of mechanics to make it better, more like the ultimate car you envision? So why do development teams believe the expensive investment they made in tools needs improvement?
The reality is that there are a huge number of right ways to approach design, not just one. Improved time to Revenue will result from consistency in approach, essentially alignment to a single approach/choice for all steps in the flow. Everyone has an opinion and firmly believes in their right choice and will fight for their cause, disrupting the much-needed consistency. We allow it, we condone it and we whine about it. The truth is tool flow customization is wreaking havoc with new product development efforts. Freedom from choice will positively impact time to revenue!