Category Archives: eda industry

Oasys

I see a fair number of EDA startups. Most of them have some potentially innovative technology that solves a problem that is getting or going to get worse at future process nodes. But it is really hard to assess whether … Continue reading

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DAC

DAC has just announced the program. You probably already know, but just in case you don’t: DAC is late this year, July 26-31st and it is in San Francisco at the Moscone Center (walking distance from where I live, yeah!). … Continue reading

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SaaS for EDA

SaaS, or software as a service, is the capability to deliver software over the net. In web 1.0 years this was called the ASP model, for application service provider. The archetypal company doing this is Salesforce.com, which provides customer relationship … Continue reading

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FPGA software

Why isn’t there a large thriving FPGA software market? After all, something like 95% of semiconductor designs are FPGA so there should be scope for somebody to be successful in that market. If the big EDA companies have the wrong … Continue reading

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Ready for liftoff?

I talked earlier about how it seems to take $6M to build a channel in EDA once you get to the “just add water” stage where all you need to do is to ramp up a salesforce and distribution. However, … Continue reading

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Creating demand in EDA

I talked earlier about how EDA marketing can’t create demand. Small companies cannot afford much marketing and large companies are in the vicious cycle of not being able to get innovation into the channel since they can’t create demand even … Continue reading

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Swiffering new EDA tools

Why isn’t a new EDA tool like Swiffer? One point that I’ve made before is that big EDA companies suffer from being unable to get new products into their channel. As I said earlier: “When so much is riding on … Continue reading

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EDA startups: channel costs $6M

I’ve put together several business plans for EDA startups once the product is ready for market. One question is always how much money needs to be raised. The answer always turns out to be about $6M. When you put together … Continue reading

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Competing with free EDA software

Chris Anderson (editor of Wired, owner of TED, author of The Long Tail) has a new book called Free coming out in July. One thing that he emphasizes (at least in his articles on the subject, I’ve not seen the … Continue reading

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EDA startups: seven million to takeoff

A startup EDA company needs about $7M in bookings to become self-sustaining and not require another round of external funding. Curiously, it doesn’t seem to depend all that much on the product provided there is really a market out there, … Continue reading

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