2024 Outlook with Anupam Bakshi of Agnisys

We have worked with Agnisys for the last two years and it has been a pleasure. Anupam and his team of specification automation experts have pioneered a family of products and solutions for streamlining the generation of the required files for design, software, verification, validation, and documentation for semiconductor development directly from executable specifications. This saves your IP and chip development teams time and effort many times throughout the course of a project. Whenever a specification changes for any reason, all output files are updated, keeping all teams in sync, absolutely.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.
I’m Anupam from Agnisys, a company I formed in 2007, so it’s been 16 years here. Our vision has been to eradicate wastage of time and resources in the
chip design process. Our flagship product suite is called IDesignSpec which
is useful in compiling higher level specifications into highly optimized
code for area, for power, for verification, for firmware, and the list goes
on. The tool helps establish a single source of truth in a company that
keeps everyone in sync from the start. Over the years, we have enabled
hundreds of teams and thousands of engineers to save time and money.

What was the most exciting high point of 2023 for your company?
Its hard to say because there was so much happening in 2023, never a dull
moment! But getting requests for sequences from existing and new customers was the highlight. You see, we had a sequence product in 2019 but it was early for its times. Now we see a renewed interest in sequences thanks to PSS (An Accellera standard that Agnisys helped in creating as well).

What was the biggest challenge your company faced in 2023?
There were several, but two were significant – Power optimization and Clock
Domain Crossings in large circuits. Bigger designs can’t be created with
simple old ways, a concentrated effort has to be made to ensure that power
conformance and CDC handling.

How is your company’s work addressing this biggest challenge?
We solved the challenges by enhancing the functionality of the products.

What do you think the biggest growth area for 2024 will be, and why?
I think it will be the rampant use of AI both in helping create generic
IP/SoC and specialized AI IP/SoC.

How is your company’s work addressing this growth?
We are directly using AI in the core IDesignSpec product as well as in
ancillary areas like Chatbots for help with product usage.

What conferences did you attend in 2023 and how was the traffic?
We exhibited at DAC and almost all DVCon – in US, EU, India, China, Japan.
All were well attended and we had lots of fun. We tried to have a sponsored
event at all these shows.

Will you attend conferences in 2024? Same or more?
We will probably attended more – it’s a great place to meet customers and
show our work. Also it’s a source for new ideas and direction, not to
mention an opportunity to interact with the peers in the industry.

Final comments?
We are just as excited and enthusiastic about our products and services as
we were when we started 16 years ago. We thank our customers for standing by a young startup and seeing it grow into a key EDA player.