20 years of a local EDA: from craftsmanship to leapfrog development

Latest update time：2024-05-09

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In recent years, the EDA market has been profoundly affected by changes in the global chip industry, and has developed intensely and turbulently. EDA, electronic design automation, is a general term for software that completes IC functional design, comprehensive verification, physical design and other process processes with the assistance of a computer system. According to statistics, the global EDA output value in 2023 will be approximately US$14.6 billion, but it plays a decisive role in the US$536 billion global integrated circuit industry. Using EDA tools, chip design costs can be reduced from billions of dollars to tens of millions of dollars, demonstrating its unique economic value and industry status.

For a long time, the EDA market has been monopolized by overseas giants, which has caused the domestic semiconductor industry to face huge challenges in both technology and market. At the same time, turmoil and changes in the global chip market, as well as geopolitical tensions and changes in trade policies, have further exacerbated the uncertainty in the semiconductor industry. Against this background, it has become particularly urgent to accelerate the development of local EDA technology.

Fortunately, with the "golden decades" of China's EDA industry, we have witnessed the rise of many local EDA companies. Among them, a representative company - Silxin (full name "Shanghai Silxin Technology Co., Ltd.") , after 20 years of craftsmanship, has achieved a breakthrough from 0 to 1 in the field of digital front-end EDA. . How will we proceed from this solid foundation to achieve leapfrog development from 1 to N?

The 20th anniversary of Silxin's establishment is also the "golden twenty years" of China's EDA industry.

Since the rise of automated integrated circuit design in the 1960s, the EDA industry has gradually developed and ushered in an all-round rise in the 1980s, officially entering a golden period of development. However, my country's local EDA industry did not start until the early 1990s. Due to a weak industrial foundation and long-term restrictions on overseas technology, development has been relatively slow. In particular, the high-end market is almost monopolized by the three international giants Synopsys, Cadence and Siemens EDA.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, with the country's strong support for the semiconductor chip industry, the development of the domestic integrated circuit industry has continued to accelerate, and domestic EDA manufacturers are also preparing to start making efforts. During this period, Mr. Lin Junxiong, the founder of Silxin and the current chairman and CEO, returned to Shanghai from Silicon Valley in 2004 and established Silxin's headquarters and first R&D center. At that time, China's chip design industry was still in its infancy, and the domestic EDA field was still barren.

Where to start an EDA business? As the integrated circuit industry continues to evolve, digital chip design becomes increasingly complex, and chip verification therefore faces huge financial and time challenges. In order to reduce costs and shorten the development cycle, efficient EDA verification tools are particularly critical and have become an essential tool for chip developers to verify designs. This has also become the entry point for Silxin.

Since its establishment in 2004, Silxin has been focusing on the field of digital verification and is the first company in the industry to develop prototype verification tools. By 2020, its prototype verification solutions accounted for 8.88% of the global market, ranking second in the world. However, the success behind this is not without challenges.

Lin Junxiong recalled: "Our first-generation prototype verification system put a lot of effort into the research and development process, but encountered major challenges after its market launch. The first-generation product tried to combine prototype verification with hardware simulation. Although the concept was advanced, it failed to meet the requirements. The actual demand from domestic chip design companies resulted in only three units being sold.”

After an initial trial of the market and an in-depth understanding of customer needs, Silxin launched the second generation prototype verification - Logic Module (Logic Module) in 2006, which gained wide recognition from the market and customers in a short period of time.

The craftsman spirit of a great country was first proposed in the 2016 Government Work Report. Whether in the industrial economy or the digital economy, the spirit of craftsmanship is an important force driving China's development and the spiritual source of innovation and entrepreneurship. Lin Junxiong pointed out: "From the perspective of the digital economy, the most critical spirit of craftsmanship is the spirit of innovation. Innovation not only symbolizes development and progress, but also clears away obstacles and misunderstandings every step forward. Even if they encounter failures and setbacks, these It’s all a necessary process of continuous polishing and improvement.” Looking back at the early days, what Sierxin adheres to in product research and development is exactly the spirit of great craftsmanship that it has always advocated.

At the same time, the EDA industry has been included in the scope of major national science and technology projects, and the local EDA industry has been on the right track driven by policies. Domestic EDA companies including Sierxin have ushered in an explosive period and have continued to make breakthroughs in many market segments. , continue to narrow the gap with overseas giants, and gradually gain the advantage of scale.

Although domestic EDA manufacturers have made breakthroughs in some fields, the complete chain of full-process EDA tools still faces challenges, leading to fragmented competition in the industry and serious homogeneity of enterprises. Given the complexity of the full-process digital tool chain, it is difficult for a single company to complete it independently. China's EDA industry needs to accelerate growth through mergers and acquisitions. Silxin's development path also follows this trend.

Initially, Silxin grew under the incubation of Shanghai Integrated Circuit Technology and Industry Promotion Center (ICC) and was acquired by Guowei Group in 2018. Since then, Silxin has continued to increase its investment in research and development and expanded its product lines, which has greatly improved its industry influence and sales performance. In 2022, Sierxin will incorporate Sinopharm Crystal Rui under its umbrella, and through core technology integration, it will integrate Sinopharm Crystal Rui's hardware simulation technology into its digital EDA full-process layout, further enriching the product line.

In recent years, with the attention caused by the "ZTE/Huawei incident", the urgency and necessity of developing the domestic EDA industry have been widely recognized. In response to this demand, the government has successively launched a number of support policies, and the demand in the downstream market has also continued to grow, providing a good opportunity for the accelerated development of the domestic EDA industry. Sierxin, which has been deployed for a long time, has also officially ushered in the golden window for domestic EDA to take off.

On the basis of investing heavily in technology research and development, Silxin has formed a complete digital front-end EDA process by strengthening core technologies and external mergers and acquisitions . The rise of the domestic EDA industry has provided fertile ground for growth for Silxin, and Silxin's layout has also injected new vitality and power into the vigorous development of domestic EDA.

With 20 years of craftsmanship and continuous innovation and development, Silxin has achieved a breakthrough from a single product to a complete solution chain in the field of EDA verification tools. Since the launch of the first-generation prototype verification system in 2005, Silxin has launched eight generations of products. At present, the company has comprehensively deployed multiple digital front-end EDA tools, including architecture design (Genesis core craftsman), software simulation (PegaSim core shenchi), hardware simulation (OmniArk core shending), prototype verification (Prodigy core god pupil) and digital Debugging (Claryti Core Shenjue) and supporting full cloud migration. In addition, it is equipped with a rich verification IP library and speed reduction bridge solution, providing chip design companies with a comprehensive product portfolio, empowering chip design, and accelerating the future development of chip technology.

Today, Silxin has successfully provided comprehensive chip design verification EDA solutions to more than 600 companies around the world. These include 11 of the world's top 25 semiconductor companies and 10 of China's top 15 integrated circuit design companies.

The growth process of Silxin not only witnessed the forging ahead of China's integrated circuit industry, but also demonstrated the craftsmanship of domestic EDA in overcoming difficulties, constantly polishing, and striving for excellence.

Looking back on Sierxin's 20 years of ups and downs, Lin Junxiong divided it into two stages: the first ten years of sowing and hard work, and the second decade of rapid growth. It can be seen that from the 0 to 1 stage, Silxin took the lead in the domestic EDA market and developed from a single point tool to 5 major product lines and EDA cloud services. Its EDA products have been implemented by many customers at home and abroad. Promotion and use. With the growth of domestic EDA companies, China's EDA industry will also enter the next stage of development and complete the transformation from 1 to N.

Lin Junxiong said frankly that in the past 20 years, Chinese EDA companies have experienced multiple development stages such as continuous technological exploration and industrial implementation. Although the chip industry is currently facing market fluctuations and "involution", in the long term, under the huge market demand and industry localization trend, the domestic EDA industry still faces huge market opportunities, such as rapid technology iteration, faster In terms of localization support and adding new functions, domestic EDA is better than overseas EDA companies.

Precision core strategy, the way to "break the situation" in the local EDA industry

In recent years, with the development of emerging technologies and industries such as AI, Chiplet, RISC-V, and automotive electronics, emerging architectures, standards, needs, and concepts have continuously promoted industry progress. The performance requirements for chips have increased sharply, and the scale and complexity of chips have also increased. Keep climbing. At the same time, the rapid development of technology and intensified market competition require chip manufacturers to quickly respond to market changes, shorten product development cycles, and launch new generation products in a timely manner.

These provide new growth space for the EDA industry. "This is a new opportunity for domestic EDA manufacturers to compete with international manufacturers on the same stage," Lin Junxiong said excitedly.

Facing new opportunities and challenges, in the current ever-changing semiconductor ecosystem, Silxin focuses on the Precision Chip Strategy (PCS) and adopts heterogeneous verification methods, as well as parallel drive and left-shift cycle methods, aiming to ensure Design the Chip Right, also ensure Design the Right Chip.

Chip development has always emphasized design accuracy, because tapeout failure will not only lead to high cost losses, but may also cause companies to miss important market windows. However, if you observe the entire chip development process, you will find that the design and verification requirements at each stage are different. In order to ensure that the design is accurate at every step, sufficient simulation and verification are required. To this end, Silxin proposed the concept of "heterogeneous verification".

The heterogeneous verification method integrates Silxin's multiple verification methods, allowing multiple different forms of designs to be co-simulated and cross-verified at various stages, and establishing a unified design, verification and debugging environment. This environment not only promotes efficient collaboration across teams, but also ensures that every aspect of the design can achieve predetermined accuracy, thereby efficiently achieving the goal of "ensuring the chip design is correct" in a short period of time .

In response to the goal of "ensuring the correct chip design" , Silxin uses parallel drive and left-shift cycle methods to achieve an efficient and accurate workflow from the early stages of design.

Take RISC-V as an example. Although its free open source, simple instruction set and highly modular design bring advantages, the free customization of different manufacturers also increases the design complexity and verification difficulty. To do this, EDA tools need to provide advanced modeling, simulation and verification capabilities. In particular, it ensures that customized RISC-V cores meet design specifications, performance requirements, and rigorous verification of processor performance, power consumption, and security.

At this time, engineers can map the RTL code into the prototype verification through collaborative modeling of Prodigy and Genesis Architect, so that the design model is consistent with the final chip. Through the model of architectural design and prototype verification, its running speed can be close to that of the final chip, so it can carry out early software development, customer demonstrations, etc., and can also conduct various certifications in advance. This method greatly shortens the development time, and at the same time realizes the time advancement of the design and verification process, that is, "left shift", thereby achieving the goal of "ensuring the design of the correct chip" quickly and well .

To put it simply, regarding heterogeneous verification and parallel-driven left-shift cycle methods, the former emphasizes design accuracy to prevent cost losses and missed market opportunities; the latter focuses on innovative design methods and tools to efficiently and accurately design Chips with real market value.

For the EDA industry, especially domestic EDA, if it wants to compete with the three international giants, in addition to catching up with existing technology, it is very important to find another track and focus on new technologies. Emerging technologies and market changes will be a very good entry point for domestic manufacturers. window of opportunity.

Through the "precision core strategy", Silxin is going all out to try to provide efficient technical solutions and strategic layout for emerging markets.

The spirit of craftsman is the same as one day for twenty years

Craftsman spirit is a pursuit of technological excellence and represents long-term focus and innovation. Traditionally, artisans are craftsmen dedicated to the creation and perfection of physical handicrafts. However, in the information age, we have seen the rise of "information craftsmen" who deal with intangible information. As the country vigorously promotes the digital economy, as the "mother of chips" EDA, practitioners in this industry are facing more development opportunities.

In the past 20 years, Silxin, as the first digital EDA company in China, has been deeply involved in the digital front-end field, constantly polishing, optimizing and improving its products, and has won the trust and support of more than 600 global customers.

Seniors in the industry have said that what the domestic chip industry lacks most is not talent, but the persistence of those with "craftsman spirit." This is the ultimate pursuit of technology, the ultimate refinement of each process, and the long-term focus and innovation on subdivided industries. It is the most precious thing in the current integrated circuit field. Corporate characteristics.

While maintaining the essence of tradition, Sierxin also constantly seeks innovation. Through continuous efforts to practice these high standards of self-requirements, we will promote the company's sustainable development and establish a strong and trustworthy brand image in the minds of customers. Perhaps it is the pursuit of perfection by more "craftsmen" like Sierxin that makes the domestic EDA industry become better and better.

In an interview with the author, Lin Junxiong said that the reason why Silxin has been able to focus on this for a long time is that with the rapid development of China's semiconductor industry, the demand for domestic EDA tools has increased significantly. As an early domestic EDA tool provider, Silxin responded to the country’s call for independent innovation and localization, which is of great significance to its long-term development. At the same time, the government's strong support for the semiconductor industry has also provided a good development environment for EDA companies, allowing companies such as Silxin to continue to develop in this field.

On the other hand, the state advocates and emphasizes the spirit of craftsmanship and encourages companies to focus on deep technology development and strive for excellence. The professional persistence and continuous pursuit of product quality embodied by Sierxin coincide with this spirit of craftsmanship in a great country. Through independent innovation, from the development of initial prototype verification tools to subsequent technical iterations and updates, Silxin continuously improves product performance to adapt to the ever-changing market and technical requirements, thereby maintaining an advantage in the competition.

Today's Silxin is far from the start-up that struggled from 0 to 1 twenty years ago. It already has the hard-core technical strength of digital EDA tools. On this solid foundation, the next step is to move towards leapfrog development!

Keep going steadily and achieve great results. Don’t lose sight of your heart’s desire. Everything can be expected.

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