For the last two decades or so, the EDA industry has grown at the same rate as the overall semiconductor industry. Mentor Graphics CEO Wally Rhines explained the situation to Magdy Abadir in the January/February 2017 edition of IEEE Design and Test magazine:

“EDA revenue is very stable at 2% of semiconductor revenue, and if the semiconductor industry doesn’t grow, it’s difficult for the IC design-related parts of the EDA industry to grow. …Historically, EDA grew much faster than the semiconductor industry because not everyone had adopted automation, so we … Read More → "A Brief and Personal History of EDA Part 8: The Big DA Era"

The first six articles in this series described the history of the EDA industry from its earliest beginnings to becoming the multi-billion-dollar heart of the semiconductor industry. Starting with one-off tools developed by various systems companies for their R&D departments developing circuit boards and ICs, the commercial EDA industry was ignited by the spark that was the Design Automation Conference. It then progressed through various phases starting with CAD companies, CAE companies, and EDA companies. The evolved EDA companies grew through acquisition, and when there were very few small EDA startups left to gobble up, … Read More → "A Brief and Personal History of EDA Part 7: EDA’s 60-Layer Cake"

The Mead-Conway methodology for designing VLSI ICs triggered the development of three dominant CAE companies – Daisy, Mentor Graphics, and Valid – which in turn led to the later development of the three dominant EDA companies – Cadence, Synopsys, and Mentor Graphics. These histories appear in Parts 3 and 4 of this article series. The emergence of the three EDA companies was immediately followed by a long, continuing era of EDA acquisitions, as discussed in Part 5 of this article series.

The Mead-Conway design methodology’s reliance on the use of standard cells also triggered the emergence of design … Read More → "A Brief and Personal History of EDA, Part 6: The IP Era"

EDA’s acquisition era arrived close on the heels of the EDA era. SDA merged with ECAD to form Cadence in 1987, and the new company’s first acquisition was in 1989. The company has made nearly 40 acquisitions to date. Synopsys incorporated in 1986, and its first acquisition was in 1990. The company has made more than 100 acquisitions to date. Mentor Graphics metamorphosed from a dying CAE company into a vibrant EDA company around 1993, and its first post-metamorphosis acquisition was in 1997. The company made at least 15 acquisitions before being acquired itself in 2017 by Siemens. All three of these leading EDA companies … Read More → "A Brief and Personal History of EDA, Part 5: The Acquisition Era"

Rising complexity drove the creation of ever-more-powerful tools for electronic design. When circuit board and IC layouts escaped the bounds of pencil, paper, and manual dexterity, CAD tools from Applicon, Calma, and Computervision appeared. When polygon representations no longer sufficed as the first gate arrays appeared, CAE tools from Daisy, Mentor, and Valid appeared. These CAE companies attempted to provide all-in-one design suites for ICs and circuit boards. However, Moore’s Law drove IC complexity far beyond the abilities of these CAE design tool suites. More complex ICs demanded even more refined tools for logic simulation, timing … Read More → "A Brief and Personal History of EDA, Part 4: Cadence, Synopsys, and Mentor Graphics – The EDA Era"