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The EDA War, Whole New Battlegrounds

Arthur Hanson

Well-known member
It looks like EDA will be the next major front in the West's conflict with China. This small industry looks to be the next field of conflict creating a whole new type of commercial warfare. It will raise many questions on all sides as the importance of EDA to a huge industry that is becoming the foundation of our modern lives. It will raise many questions as IP in this area becomes a key battleground impacting everything from war machines to consumer products of every type. With electronics now integrated into almost everything we touch in an increasingly complex world, the warfare around it will resemble no other conflict we have ever seen before and will become as important or maybe more important to master than any other type of warfare. This is literally giving us a Brave New World with new strategies, conflicts and weapons we haven't even imagined for much of it will take place in the cloud and data centers. Maybe much of this battle will occur in the courts and justice systems of the world and will probably have many fronts and iterations we haven't even dreamed of. Any thoughts, observations or strategies for this new type of conflict we have never really seen on a large scale before will be appreciated.

 
EDA needs to co-develop with the fabs. Each process is unique, so the rules (although they may have similarities) need to be customized for each EDA tool for each fab process. The EDA companies must have teams assigned to work with the fabs, and the fabs must assign people to work with the EDA teams. I assume that the fabs do not have a generic set of rules they can simply hand over to a new EDA player.
 
It looks like EDA will be the next major front in the West's conflict with China. This small industry looks to be the next field of conflict creating a whole new type of commercial warfare. It will raise many questions on all sides as the importance of EDA to a huge industry that is becoming the foundation of our modern lives. It will raise many questions as IP in this area becomes a key battleground impacting everything from war machines to consumer products of every type. With electronics now integrated into almost everything we touch in an increasingly complex world, the warfare around it will resemble no other conflict we have ever seen before and will become as important or maybe more important to master than any other type of warfare. This is literally giving us a Brave New World with new strategies, conflicts and weapons we haven't even imagined for much of it will take place in the cloud and data centers. Maybe much of this battle will occur in the courts and justice systems of the world and will probably have many fronts and iterations we haven't even dreamed of. Any thoughts, observations or strategies for this new type of conflict we have never really seen on a large scale before will be appreciated.


I'm wondering what those Chinese EDA software companies can achieve without the major foundries' collaboration?
 
EDA needs to co-develop with the fabs. Each process is unique, so the rules (although they may have similarities) need to be customized for each EDA tool for each fab process. The EDA companies must have teams assigned to work with the fabs, and the fabs must assign people to work with the EDA teams. I assume that the fabs do not have a generic set of rules they can simply hand over to a new EDA player.

TSMC works closely with the top (4) EDA companies: Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens, and Ansys. The other foundries get what is left over. Synopsys has an advantage since they also have IP but the Cadence CoB is on the Intel board. EDA is a very interesting dynamic. Intel is in a unique position as they are a major EDA customer as well as a foundry. Chinese EDA companies have SMIC.

PDKs are very closely guarded now so you really to be a top EDA company or have one of TSMC's top customers behind you if you need a TSMC PDK for development.
 
PDKs are very closely guarded now so you really to be a top EDA company or have one of TSMC's top customers behind you if you need a TSMC PDK for development.
Does TSMC (or any foundry) really have a usable PDK of their own? It looks to me like Synopsis has PDKs for TSMC, as do Cadence and Siemens, but since each of those do a lot of work to implement and validate rules in their own tools, is there actually a finished, usable PDK that TSMC has which could agree to give to a newcomer? I would assume that the newcomer would need to do a whole bunch of work to translate from rules the way TSMC thinks about them, into rules which their tools can work with to comply with the process. So in a sense the foundry is not in sole control of that PDK.
 
Does TSMC (or any foundry) really have a usable PDK of their own? It looks to me like Synopsis has PDKs for TSMC, as do Cadence and Siemens, but since each of those do a lot of work to implement and validate rules in their own tools, is there actually a finished, usable PDK that TSMC has which could agree to give to a newcomer? I would assume that the newcomer would need to do a whole bunch of work to translate from rules the way TSMC thinks about them, into rules which their tools can work with to comply with the process. So in a sense the foundry is not in sole control of that PDK.

The PDKs belong to the foundries. They have many secrets inside. TSMC has thousands of PDKs. EDA companies use TSMC PDKs for tool development and deployment to mutual customers.

The TSMC OIP events are coming in October. TSMC will present what PDKs are available and what tools they support (Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens, and Ansys).
 
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