Can domestic EDA shoulder big responsibilities?

Introduction:

The competition between China and the United States in science and technology is fierce, and China's semiconductors have been developing rapidly for 20 years. As a small but important part of it, what is the current level of EDA? If domestic EDA is really used, will it make progress or regression for China's IC industry? If you want to know the answer, you still have to start with the situation of domestic EDA.

EDA (Electronic design automation) electronic design automation consists of a series of methods, algorithms and tools that assist in the design, verification and testing of automated electronic systems.

From the concept, we can know why EDA is called the "mother of chips".

The reason why such an important EDA is "stuck" is because we are too dependent on foreign countries.

As early as 40 years ago in the United States, the EDA industry began to emerge and develop rapidly.

The three foreign EDA companies, Synopsys, Cadence and Siemens EDA (formerly Mentor Graphics, acquired by Siemens of Germany in 2016), have always been called the "Three International Giants" in the industry, because the current global EDA market is divided up by these three giants, and the global market share Accounting for about 68%, the domestic market accounts for about 85%.

So where is the domestic EDA? It can be said that the domestic EDA in the past was an embarrassing existence.

EDA is like the Office software used in our company. In order to avoid market failure caused by poor tools, large companies will choose to purchase genuine special software. But for some start-up companies, in order to save money, more will choose to "take advantage of loopholes."

EDA is a tool that attaches great importance to customer experience. When everyone is accustomed to the tools of the three giants, all textbooks and tutorials will start with the products of these three companies, and it will be difficult to change user habits.

EDA needs to be constantly updated and iterated to achieve good results. What are the prerequisites for optimization? Enough user experience and testing, followed by collection and feedback of test results, and finally optimization and iteration.

The late-developing domestic EDA naturally has not many customers, and naturally receives less feedback data. Iterative updates and reliability are relatively poor. Tools with poor performance will naturally have fewer users... and ultimately form an endless cycle. .

When all companies are using the tools of the Big Three, they will receive more feedback, accumulate more user data and usage needs, and then optimize the tools. In other words, in the past few decades, the whole world has been helping them develop tools.

Objectively speaking, the strength of the three international giants is not without reason. Mainly because they have EDA products that cover the entire process. Initially, they also started from a certain point tool, and through dozens of mergers and acquisitions over a long period of time, they quickly completed leading product technologies. Among them, Synopsys had the most, more than 80 times, and then formed a team that could cover the entire process. EDA.

At that time, domestic EDA was still in the early stages of industry development. Although some companies had certain advantages in individual tools or some subdivisions, their products were never comprehensive enough. This was also the main shortcoming of domestic EDA.

In addition, the development of domestic EDA cannot be separated from talents. However, there is currently a shortage of EDA talents in China. When a small field does not receive attention, a large number of talents will naturally continue to flow out. Either he went straight to the arms of the three major companies, or he moved to the Internet, finance and other fields that were hot at the time. It can be said that the entire ecology of domestic EDA in the past was very poor.

After nearly twenty years of development, domestic EDA has gradually grown stronger, and now domestic EDA has made technological breakthroughs in various segments.

Combining the circuit types and technical aspects of integrated circuits, integrated circuit EDA tools can be divided into three major categories: digital chip design full-process EDA, analog and hybrid circuit design full-process EDA, and integrated circuit manufacturing EDA. For different types of chips, different EDA tools are used. Each type of EDA tool is composed of several EDA point tools.

Among them, digital chips are the main component of the integrated circuit market and occupy most of the market share, so domestic digital EDA is extremely important. Among the current domestic EDA companies, there are also some that are doing well, such as Silxin.

Silxin is the leader in domestic prototype verification. It has focused on digital chip EDA front-end verification for eighteen years and has established good cooperative relationships with more than 500 domestic and foreign companies, including six of the top fifteen semiconductor companies in the world in 2020. and seven of the top ten integrated circuit design companies in China. According to statistics from CCID Consulting, in terms of the prototype verification market in 2020, Silxin ranked first in the Chinese market and second in the global market.

In addition, Shenzhen Guowicin Technology Co., Ltd. is committed to building a bridge between digital chip design and manufacturing, and has leading EDA key core technologies. Its main products and services include design back-end EDA tools, manufacturing-end EDA tools, IP design, and DFT design. Services and back-end design services, etc. There is also Shanghai Guowei Xinxin Semiconductor Co., Ltd., which focuses on one-stop chip design verification and mass production services. The above domestic EDA companies have completed the technical deployment of key nodes of the digital integrated circuit EDA platform.

Today's domestic EDA is far from the start-up companies that struggled from 0 to 1 20 years ago. It has already achieved good development and has the core technical strength of key tools. The problem is that the cost of the digital chip itself from design to tape-out is very high. It requires many types of EDA tools and high requirements. To achieve a real breakthrough, the entire digital EDA process of domestic production must be achieved. This is no longer 0 to 1, but 1 to 10.

Anyone familiar with the development history of domestic EDA knows that in fact, domestic EDA started not too late. In 1994, after the ban on "Batumi" was lifted, the concept of "it is better to buy than to make" became popular in the country. Under constant impact from overseas manufacturers, domestic EDA has stagnated for 15 years. After that, the development of domestic EDA was tortuous and slow. It was not until overseas EDA giants stopped cooperating with Huawei in 2018 that domestic EDA saw a new turn for the better.

Objectively speaking, domestic EDA still has about 40% of the process gaps, covering only a small part or a few links. But now the situation of domestic EDA has opened up and is moving towards the whole process.

In fact, the success of domestic EDA has never been one-sided. Judging from its research and development and promotion, it is both a technology and a commodity. Only by closely cooperating upstream and downstream of the entire IC industry chain, feeding each other, and giving feedback to each other can it be possible to form a benign closed loop. If we just work on our own, it will never become a climate. This is also the way out for China’s semiconductor industry and China Chip.

That’s right, it’s time to build a new domestic EDA ecosystem.

Starting from the "core", we jointly build a new EDA ecosystem. The 2022 Silxin Ecological Conference is launched!

From November 12th to November 29th, Silxin teamed up with China Microchip, China Microchip, and China Microchip to invite all companies to discuss innovative technologies and share industry knowledge. Here is a more comprehensive technical ecology of domestic EDA, with reliable technologies and services surrounding the entire process of domestic EDA, such as advanced heterogeneous verification methodology, the first domestic hardware simulation system, "customized version" formal verification tools, and one-stop digital Design, verification and mass production services help partners freely construct chip design and manufacturing and explore infinite possibilities!

This conference will be held for 6 consecutive times, starting from Shenzhen, spanning Shanghai, Chengdu, Changsha, Beijing, and Xi'an, including modern cities, ancient capitals of six dynasties, and the origin of red. It is an industry event full of useful information. Under a win-win situation, China's semiconductor industry will become a global leader.

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