Embedded software: Next revolution in EDA

Dr. Wally Rhines.

There is a key lesson that Mentor Graphics made while trying to deliver solutions that were right for software and hardware developers. The lesson was: tailor the software to the discipline! Make it as similar to their environment as possible!!

Delivering his speech at the ongoing 13th Global Electronics Summit in Santa Cruz, USA, Dr. Wally Rhines, chairman and CEO, Mentor Graphics, said that 15 years of acquisitions taught Mentor how to think and behave as an embedded software company.

Open systems requires active engagement in software committees. Each open source project has some form of governance to manage contributions, release plans, etc. There is a community peer selection process for each open source project. About 50 Mentor Embedded Sourcerers are actively involved in the open source and Android communities.

There is a need to take the advantage of knowing both worlds. Mentor’s Sourcery CodeBench is an embedded C/C++ development tool based on open-source standards. Sourcery CodeBench is a complete development environment for embedded C/C++ development on ARM, Coldfire, MIPS, Power, X86, and other architectures. You can install, flash and debug in minutes!

Sourcery CodeBench
Sourcery CodeBench is now the semiconductor industry’s leading embedded toolchain. There is an integrated development environment. It has the GNU compiler (GCC) and optimization tools. It allows debugging and analysis, libraries and QEMU simulator.

There are about ~15,000 downloads per month. There have been ~150,000 downloads and 300 releases per year.

Next wave of design challenges, and future growth of EDA: Dr. Wally Rhines

Dr. Wally Rhines.

Today, EDA requires specialization. Elaborating on EDA over the past decade, Dr. Walden (Wally) C. Rhines, chairman and CEO, of Mentor Graphics, and vice chairman of the EDA Consortium, USA, said that PCB design has been flat despite growth in analysis, DFM and new emerging markets. Front end design has seen growth from RF/analog design and simulation, and analysis As design methodologies mature, EDA expenditures stop growing. He was speaking at Mentor Graphics’ U2U (User2User) conference in Bangalore, India.

Most of the EDA revenue growth comes from major new design methodologies, such as ESL, DFM, analog-mixed signal and RF. PCB design trend continues to be flat, and includes license and maintenance. The IC layout verification market is pointing to a 2.1 percent CAGR at the end of 2011. The RTL simulation market has been growing at 1.3 percent CAGR for the last decade. The IC physical implementation market has been growing at 3,4 percent CAGR for the last decade.

Growth areas in EDA from 2000-2011 include DFM at 28 percent CAGR, formal verification at 12 percent, ESL at 11 pecent, and IC/ASIC analysis at 9 percent, respectively.

What will generate the next wave of electronic product design challenges, and the future growth of EDA? This would involve solving new problems that are not part of the traditional EDA, and ‘do what others don’t do!

Methodology changes that may change EDA
There are five factors that can make this happen. These are:
* Low power design beyond RTL (and even ESL).
* Functional verification beyond simulation.
* Physical verification beyond design for manufacturability.
* Design for test beyond compression.
* System design beyond PCBs

Low power design at higher levels
Power affects every design stage. Sometimes, designing for low power at system level is required. System level optimization has the biggest impact on power/performance. And, embedded software is a major point of leverage.

Embedded software has an increasing share of the design effort. Here, Mentor’s Nucleus power management framework is key. It has an unique API for power management, enables software engineers to optimize power consumption, and reduces lines of application code. Also, power aware design optimizes code efficiency.

Functional verification beyond RTL simulation
The Verification methodology standards war is over. UVM is expected to grow by 286 percent in the next 12 months. Mentor Graphics Questa inFact is the industry’s most advanced testbench automation solution. It enables Testbench re-use and accelerates time-to-coverage. Intelligent test bench facilitates linear transition to multi-processing.

Questa accelerates the hardware/software verification environment. In-circuit emulation has been evolving to virtual hardware acceleration and embedded software development. Offline debug increases development productivity. A four-hour on-emulator software debug session drops to 30 minutes batch run. The offline debug allows 150 software designers to jumpstart debug process on source code. Virtual stimulus increases the flexibility of the emulator. As an example, Veloce is 700x more efficient than large simulation farms.

Physical verification beyond design for manufacturability
The Calibre PERC is a new approach to circuit verification. The Calibre 3DSTACK is the verification flow for 3D.

Dr. Wally Rhines on global EDA industry

It is always a pleasure interacting with Dr. Walden (Wally) C. Rhines, the chairman and CEO, Mentor Graphics, and vice chairman of the EDA Consortium, USA. I started by enquiring about the global semiconductor industry.

Dr. Wally Rhines

Dr. Wally Rhines said: “The absolute size of the semiconductor industry (in terms or total revenue) differs depending on which analyst you ask, because of differences in methodology and the breadth of analysts’ surveys. Current 2012 forecasts include $316 billion from Gartner, $320 billion from IDC, $324.5 billion from IHS iSuppli, $327.2 billion from Semico Research and $339 billion from IC Insights.

“These numbers reflect growth rates from 4 per cent to 9.2 per cent, based on the different analyst-specific 2011 totals. Capital spending forecasts for the three largest semiconductor companies have increased by almost 50 per cent just since the beginning of this year. However, the initial spurt of demand was influenced by the replenishment of computer and disc drive inventories caused by the Thailand flooding. Now that this is largely complete, there is some uncertainty about the second half.

“So, overall it looks like the industry will pass $310 billion this year, but it may not be by very much. The strong capital spending and demand for leading edge capacity should impact the second half but the bigger impact will probably be in 2013.

What’s with 28.20nm?
Has 28/20nm semiconductor technology become a major ‘work horse’? What’s going on in that area? At least, this area is now of considerable interest.

Dr. Rhines said that the semiconductor industry’s transition to the 28nm family of technologies, which broadly includes 32nm and 20nm, is a much larger transition than we have experienced for many technology generations.

The world’s 28nm-capable capacity now comprises almost 20 per cent of the total silicon area in production and yet, the silicon foundries are fully loaded with more 28nm demand than they can handle. In fact, high demand for 28/20nm has created a capacity pinch that is currently spurring additional capital expenditure by foundries.

He added: “As yields and throughput mature at 28nm, the major wave of capital investment will provide plentiful foundry capacity at lower cost, stimulating a major wave of design activity. Cost-effective, high yield 28nm foundry capacity will not only drive increasing numbers of new designs but it will also force re-designs of mature products to take advantage of the cost reduction opportunity.”

Realizing EDA360: Charlie Huang, Cadence

Long-term trends are strong for semiconductor and electronics. According to databeans estimate (Feb. 2011), semiconductor revenue will likely reach $450 billion by 2015 and electronics revenuw will likely reach $2,800 billion by 2015.

Speaking at the CDNLive! 2011 event in Bangalore, India, Charlie Huang, SVP of Worldwide Field Operations, Cadence Design Systems Inc., said that the challenges in the near term are slowdown in Europe and USA. The weakness is driven by increasingly negative views on the global economy, end demand, orders and outlook. Key indicators are also showing that the economy is facing headwinds. The 2011 GDP growth projections have deteriorated since the beginning of the year. The economy has been marred by high unemployment and low consumer confidence.

As of now, innovation has been driving growth. Apps have been driving innovation, followed by video, mobility, cloud and green technology. The impact on the electronics industry is multi-fold. There is a new development paradigm and collaboration has been increasing. The IP is also expanding beyond cores and the EDA is changing.

Source: Cadence.

The new development paradigm for system companies is to differentiate on applications and semiconductor companies must deliver on application-driven hardware-software platforms. IP has now expanded well beyond the core. EDA is also changing, and Cadence is investing to deliver on the EDA360 vision. There are multiple silicon realization challenges. Cadence silicon realization solutions enable fast, deterministic, end-to-end path to silicon success.

As an example, ARM and Cadence have collaborated on the GHz implementation of Cortex-A15. ARM chose ARM Artisan physical IP, evaluated the Cortex-A15 RTL, and supported CPF. Cadence optimized the EDA flow, experienced support at EAC, and provided EDA tool releases and iRM.

ARM, TSMC and Cadence also collaborated on the industry’s first 20nm Cortex-A15. TSMC provided the 20nm process qualification and A15 learnings. ARM handled the 20nm implementation experience, A15 considerations in 20nm and TSMC 20nm readiness milestone. Cadence provided the 20nm research to reality, contributed and grew the A15 expertise and TSMC 20nm readiness milestone.

The end result: the industry’s first 20nm Cortex-A15 tapeout, thanks to a successful three-way vertical collaboration. ARM, Cadence and TSMC engineers worked side-by-side. The project priorities included 20nm DPT implementation schedule and 20nm readiness milestone.

Now, there is EDA software piracy!

Great! That’s what was required!! As though software piracy isn’t enough, there is now an article about EDA software piracy!!!

According to the article, the anti-piracy committee of the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (EDAC) estimates that 30-40 percent of all EDA software use is via pirated licenses. That’s a huge number!

What are the chief reasons for EDA software piracy? Surely, it can’t be attributed to the Far East countries alone, and definitely not China and Taiwan, and perhaps, India, for that matter.

Everyone in the semiconductor industry knows that EDA software is required to design. There are hefty license fees involved that companies have to pay.

Designing a chip is a very complex activity and that requires EDA software. EDA firms send out sales guys to all over the country. Why, some of the EDA vendors are also known to form alliances with the technical colleges and universities. They offer their EDA software to such institutes at a very low cost.

Back in 2006, John Tanner wrote an article in Chip Design, stating: EDA tools shouldn’t cost more than the design engineer!

However, how many of such EDA licenses are properly used? Also, has the EDA vendor, who does go out to the technical institutes made a study about any particular institute’s usage of the EDA tool?

The recently held Design and Automation Conference (DAC) showered praises on itself for double-digit rise in attendance.  Was there a mention of EDA piracy in all of that? No way! If so, why not?

The reasons are: the EDA industry already churns out a sizeable revenue from the global usage of EDA software. EDA firms are busy trying to keep up with the latest process nodes and develop the requisite EDA tools. New products are constantly being developed, and so, product R&D is a continuous event! Of course, in all of this race, EDA firms are continuously looking to keep their revenues running high, lest there is an industry climb-down!

Where then, are the reasons for EDA firms to even check, leave alone, control piracy?

An industry friend had this to say regarding EDA software piracy. “It is the inability to use certain ‘tool modules’ only at ‘certain time’. Like, if a IP company wants to just run PrimeTime (Synopsys) few times to ensure its timing worthiness before releasing that IP, and doesn’t need it after that. However, it is is not possible to get such a short time license.” Cost and unethical practices by the stake holders were some other reasons EDA users have cited.

Regarding the status in India, especially, the difference isn’t that much, from say, China. Another user said it is not such a prevelant, ‘worrisome’ aspect, yet. Yet another EDA user said that EDA piracy is there more in the sense of ‘unauthorized’ usage than ‘unpaid’ usage — not using it for what it is supposed to be used for. For instance, using academic licenses for ‘commercial developments’, etc.

That leads to the key question: can EDA software piracy be curtailed to some extent? One user feels that yes, it can. Perhaps, Microsoft type ‘detection’ technologies exist. However, another said that the EDA companies’ expenses have to do, so it can be more than actual losses. Hence, they are probably not quite doing it!

Slew of EDA announcements @ DAC 2011

The Design and Automation Conference (DAC) 2011, kicked off today in San Diego, USA, with its usual slew of announcements. Leading the pack were Magma Design Automation and Cadence Design Systems, along with Synopsys, Mentor Graphics, and several others.

Magma Design Automation Inc. announced a partnership with Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS to develop process-independent Titan FlexCell models of the Institute’s analog intellectual property (IP) cores. It also announced the availability of a netlist-to-GDSII reference flow for GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 28nm super low-power (SLP) high-k metal-gate (HKMG) technology.

Magma announced the immediate availability of the Titan Analog Design Kit for TSMC 180nm and 65nm processes, that implements Titan’s model-based design methodology with Titan FlexCells, which are modular, process- and specification-independent, reusable analog building blocks.

Magma Design Automation also launched Silicon One, an initiative to bring focus to making silicon profitable for customers by providing differentiated solutions and technologies that address business imperatives facing semiconductor makers today – time to market, product differentiation, cost, power and performance.

Silicon One’s initial focus is on five types of devices that are key to electronic products that are most prevalent today:
* ASIC /ASSP
* Analog/mixed-signal (AMS)
* Memory
*  Processing cores
* SoCs.

Cadence Design Systems Inc. isn’t far behind either!  It announced an array of new technologies incorporated into the new TSMC Reference Flow 12.0 and AMS Reference Flow v2.0 that ensure 28nm production readiness. Cadence also announced a close collaboration with TSMC that will extend its interface IP offering.  With Imec, in Belgium, Cadence announced a new technology that delivers an automated test solution for design teams deploying 3D stacked ICs (3D-ICs).

Cadence also announced the immediate availability of verification IP (VIP) for ARM’s new AMBA 4 Coherency Extensions protocol (ACE), extending its popular VIP catalog and speeding the development of multiprocessor mobile devices. Cadence further outlined the technologies and steps required to move the industry to advanced node design, with a particular focus on 20nm and 28nm design.

Mentor Graphics announced that the Catapult C high-level synthesis tool now supports the synthesis of transaction level models (TLMs). It also announced a unified embedded software debugging platform, from pre-silicon to final product, based on the integration of the Mentor Embedded Sourcery CodeBench embedded software development tools with Mentor’s leading electronic system level (ESL), verification, and hardware emulation products. These include the Mentor Graphics Vista Virtual Prototyping product, Veloce hardware emulator, prototype target boards, and end products or any combination thereof.

Mentor Graphics announced support for 3D-IC in TSMC’s Reference Flow 12.0 (RF12). Solutions for both silicon interposer and through silicon via (TSV) stacked die configurations are now supported by the Calibre physical verification and extraction platform and the Tessent IC test solution.

ARM and Synopsys Inc. have signed an expanded multi-year agreement extending ARM’s access to Synopsys’ innovative EDA technology. ARM will also provide Synopsys with access to the ARM Cortex-A15 processor to maximize performance and energy efficiency of SoCs built by ARM’s Partners using this advanced ARM processor and Synopsys tools.

Mentor’s Wally Rhines on global EDA industry challenges – II

Dr. Wally Rhines, chairman and CEO, Mentor Graphics.

This is the concluding part of my discussion with Dr. Walden (Wally) C. Rhines, chairman and CEO, Mentor Graphics.

EDA’s role in modeling and photomask correction
I asked Dr. Rhines about the future of EDA’s role in modeling and photomask correction. He said that in just a decade, resolution enhancement has grown from zero to over $200 million in annual revenue for the EDA industry.

“Almost all of this revenue is concentrated in two EDA companies. The value of this EDA software is clearly recognized by manufacturers. Mentor has many partnerships with manufacturers and a joint development program targeting 20nm resolution enhancement with IBM.”

Handling 22nm and sub-22nm levels
Next, with new process technology nodes becoming quite the talk of the desgin community, what does EDA now need to do at 22nm and sub 22nm levels.

Dr. Rhines said: “We have been working with our customers on this for quite some time now and are in fact well down this path. We think that most of the problems have been solved, or are solvable. Obviously, most of the issues here revolve around the lithography and manufacturability, but the EDA industry has been leading this since optical proximity correction became a key technology for the fabs quite some time ago.”

Density area savings
In an earlier discussion, the issue of how compelling would integration density area savings remain by going to new nodes had come up. I have to repeat this question, as it still seems to remain an issue.

So, how long will the integration density area savings you get by going to new nodes remain compelling?

“Hard to say!” noted Dr. Rhines. “We can see a path to 15nm with the traditional 193nm immersion lithography, and we usually surprise ourselves in our ability to go farther than we think we can. However, even if density slows down, this is but one way to achieve the continuous performance improvements that we’ve seen over the years in silicon.

“3D silicon, for instance, holds the promise of allowing us to continue to grow performance without necessarily doing it by just continuing the process shrink. Logic and memory have been on a predictable “learning curve” since the vacuum tube and I don’t expect that learning curve to deviate anytime in the foreseeable future.”

Mentor’s Wally Rhines on global EDA industry challenges – I

Dr. Wally Rhines, CEO and chairman, Mentor Graphics.

It has always been such a pleasure meeting Dr.  Walden (Wally) C. Rhines, CEO and chairman, Mentor Graphics Corp. During his recent visit to India, I managed to enter into a discussion with him regarding various issues facing the global EDA industry.

Part one of the discussion looks at the industry, as well as EDA related issues such as predictability, verification and IP integration, how can Mentor help start-ups address EDA challenges, and going about software-to-silicon verification. May I also take this opportunity to thank my good friend, Mentor’s Veeresh Shetty.

I began by asking Dr. Wally Rhines about the fortunes of the global EDA industry and what’s it going to be like in 2011?

He said: “The EDA industry typically follows the recovery in semiconductor industry R&D spending by six to 12 months. Mentor’s strong results in Q3 (with 60 percent growth in bookings) suggest that the recovery has already started. In our third quarter conference call, we indicated to our investors that 2011 looks like a good year as well.” 

EDA and emerging system design challenges: Dr. Wally Rhines

Dr. Wally Rhines.

According to Dr. Walden C. Rhines, CEO and chairman, Mentor Graphics, the emerging system design challenges likely to shape the industry in the coming decade are:

* Design for low power.
* Optimizing for performance and power.
* Functional verification complexity explosion.
* Place and route timing and power closure.
* Physical verification complexity.
* Manufacturing yields.
* Increasing cost of design.
* Macro system integration.

He was delivering the keynote titled EDA and emerging system design challenges at Mentor Graphics’ U2U India conference in Bangalore.

First, Dr. Rhines highlighted that the EDA market churn is often confused with industry consolidation. EDA requires specialization. The #1 supplier in each EDA product segment averages 66 percent+ market share. However, the traditional EDA market has not been growing.

EDA market snapshot
The synthesis market trend has seen a 2.7 percent CAGR, with a 10-year average of $293 million. The market size was $273 million in 2008, and slid to $243 million in 2009. In 2010, after the first two quarters, it is approximately $125-$130 million.

The RTL simulation market trend has seen a -0.3 percent CAGR, with a 10-year average of $365 million. The market size was $394 million in 2008, and slid to $345 million in 2009. In 2010, after the first two quarters, it is approximately $150 million.

The IC layout verification market trend has seen a 0 percent CAGR, with a 10-year average of $199 million. The market size was $199 million in 2008, and slid to $187 million in 2009. In 2010, after the first two quarters, it is approximately $80-$90 million.

The IC physical implementation market trend has seen a 2.4 percent CAGR, with a 10-year average of $559 million. The market size was $549 million in 2008, and slid to $448 million in 2009. In 2010, after the first two quarters, it is approximately $210 million.

The total PCB/MCM design market trend has had a 10-year average of $484 million. The market size was $535 million in 2008, and slid to $490 million in 2009. In 2010, after the first two quarters, it is approximately $220 million. PCB design has seen growth from analysis, design for manufacturing and new emerging markets.

Semicon/EDA industry needs to figure out how to use the social media!

Cadence's Rahul Arya and John Bruggeman.

At the fag end of day 1 of CDNLive India 2010, I had the opportunity to interact with John Bruggeman, CMO, Cadence Design Systems and Rahul Arya, director, marketing and technology sales, Cadence Design Systems (I) Pvt Ltd.

A week ago, I’d written a post: Is social media really helping semicon/VLSI firms? Of course, there was a session organized by EDA Consortium (EDAC), titled: Does Social Media Reach the Engineers You Want or Waste Your Time?

Having earlier had a chat with Karen Bartleson, a panelist at the EDAC event, I thought it best to get  John’s views on some of the issues, since the EDAC panel had representation from Cadence (it wasn’t John) as well!

Lot more needs to be done on social sites
First, it is well known that the adoption of social media is at its infancy in the semicon.VLSI industry. In some other industries, the adoption is much faster. Why has it been this way, so far?

Bruggeman said: “We have an ageing population in our design community, more so than the other technology industries. So, we have been slower in adopting. The pickup on Twiter has been slow.

“We need to do whatever we can do to accelerate. We have heavily invested in bloggers and are also into driving social media. Cadence has two bloggers on staff. The blogs are promising. However, in some of the social media sites, a lot more needs to be done.” That’s quite an honest answer!

Are you building communities?
So, how are semicon/VLSI firms using the social media to build communities? Are you building or attempting to build communities? What is that particular community doing?

He added: “We need to figure out how, as an industry, should we use social media. How do you get a community of users to engage in an open dialog? We haven’t got anywhere near at developing a community. We also have to expand beyond blogging.”

Is the social media really helping reach out to design engineers? Are companies hiring via social media sites?

According to Bruggeman, every recruiter of note is now involved in LinkedIn. “Hirings are happening there. Design engineers are also going there to get hired, and not merely for free exchange of information. This is where engineers can talk to engineers,” he noted. “However, it will be interesting to see whether a commuity can be developed. So far, social media has managed to reach out to design engineers only a little bit.”