Monthly Archives: January 2009

R.I.P.

Posted on January 20, 2009 by paulmcl

Small EDA companies seem to be falling by the wayside. Over the Christmas break Blaze DFM (insert cremation joke here) and Liga Systems both reached the end of the line. Blaze will certainly get picked up; it has customers and … Continue reading →

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Episode XLIV: a new hope

Posted on January 20, 2009 by paulmcl

It’s inauguration day. Never mind how many of his policies I will disagree with, I still think that it is incredible that the US has gone in 40 years from having segregated water fountains and buses to having a black … Continue reading →

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Open source again

Posted on January 19, 2009 by paulmcl

The blog entry on open source seems to have generated more comments than anything else. Maybe it’s because all the EDA users want software to be free, and all the EDA producers are worried that it might head in that … Continue reading →

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The innovator’s dilemma

Posted on January 19, 2009 by paulmcl

The Innovator’s Dilemma is a book by Harvard business school professor Clayton Christensen. I highly recommend the book both as one of the most stimulating and best-written business books (I know that is an oxymoron, but this is a book … Continue reading →

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Why EDA differs from ERP in more than two letters

Posted on January 16, 2009 by paulmcl

What is it about EDA that makes it different from other software businesses? When the CFO of Texas Instruments buys Oracle or SAP he or she doesn’t study what algorithms they use in their relational database. EDA purchasers are the … Continue reading →

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We are fleas on a sick dog

Posted on January 15, 2009 by paulmcl

Well it was the annual EDAC CEO panel last night. The quality of the food was much better than normal, but it turned out that this was not because the CEOs were predicting a rich future in 2009 but that … Continue reading →

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Super-models

Posted on January 15, 2009 by paulmcl

I wrote earlier in the week about open source software in EDA, or rather about the lack of it. One area where there is some free and open source software, as well as closed source software, is on that boundary … Continue reading →

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Intel only needs one copy

Posted on January 14, 2009 by paulmcl

It is obvious that companies make money in EDA only if they sell enough software. One rule of thumb is that EDA companies thrive if each salesperson brings in $2M per year, and they don’t if they only bring in … Continue reading →

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Where is all the open-source EDA software?

Posted on January 13, 2009 by paulmcl

There is a big cultural difference between tools for IC design and tools for software design. A difference in the way they are developed, the way they are sold, the way they are deployed. I think there are two reasons. … Continue reading →

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City Slickers marketing

Posted on January 12, 2009 by paulmcl

I have done a fair number of consulting projects for EDA startups and a lot of them start out with what I like to call “City Slickers marketing”, named after the movie City Slickers. For those of you who have … Continue reading →

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