Date: 5th July 2010
   By Srinivas
 

The bits and bytes from EDA business guru Aart De Geus of Synopsys

Synopsys' Chairman and CEO Aart De Geus was in Bangalore on the occasion of Synopsis users event called SNUG. I could talk to him for few minutes and get some answers on the EDA (VLSI chip design software) and on the general Semiconductor industry. Here below are his responses to my queries.

ON the question of EDA market recovering as good as semiconductor in 2010:
Aart De Geus: No. The reason is EDA didn't go down like semiconductor market, semiconductor does this (by moving his hand in the form of rise and fall), semiconductor equipment does this (again moving his hand with steeper rise and fall) -- where as EDA market all-in-all very stable (held his hand in the angle of plane take off).

The products and technologies driving the semiconductor market now:
Aart De Geus: Clearly the combination of wireless and computation is changing the entire landscape -- whole set of new products and new applications are possible -- because whole thing is connected; therefore many software applications are growing. Secondly more emphasis on applications such as video -- because video is using so much bandwidth and storage -- more and more applications are looking at how to optimize the power in equipment, appliances and how to make grid smarter -- anything that saves power.

The reliability of EDA tools for designing 28nm chips:
Aart De Geus: At 28nm there are few companies that are designing today, in that sense the tools are quite reliable now and we are absolutely the leaders in these advanced nodes by par.

On the question of thinking behind acquiring Virage Logic:
Aart De Geus: The thinking behind acquiring Virage Logic is we already have an IP business. They have number of IP cores, which we don't have, especially memory cores. Many customers really liked it.

On any expansion plans of Indian operations:
Aart De Geus: There are new businesses coming, once we close this, we will be probably close to 900 people from the 750 people (right now).

Synopsys is doing very well from the past two years. Synopsys' innovation and revenue bus is slightly ahead of its competitors in the highway of chip design software. We got to wait and see how the EDA landscape will change in the coming years where the electronics industry is expected to witness some major changes in application landscape. However EDA industry is in the driver seat.