Are EDA users ready for hosted applications?

The EDA market is not a newcomer to the world of hosted applications and services. Back in the days of the nascent worldwide web, EDA companies were testing different business models that would allow them to reach more customers via the internet. Companies like Toolwire and DevelopOnline entered the EDA market believing they could be successful by offering design services over the internet – essentially hosting the application for the design team. They felt success was a sure thing because of their novel approach and the potential cost benefits for clients with this new deployment model. The EDA market, however, was not quite as accepting of this new model – too many concerns about internet security and limited bandwidth – and these efforts gradually sank to the background. Flash forward to 2009. Companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft have had some success with cloud computing: hosted application's nearest relative. No doubt, successful business models are out there addressing more mainstream markets. Further, the EDA world has changed its licensing strategy before – when it shifted from one license per assigned user to one license per any user and, finally, to the concept of fractional licenses – buying weeks or months of software time instead of a year or two at a time. So, is the EDA world ready to delve into the world of hosted software again? From Cadence's viewpoint, the EDA market has been ready for quite some time and the company has been rolling out its Hosted Design Solutions to customers for more than a year now. Who's deploying Cadence's version of software as a service (SaaS) for semiconductor design? The bigger industries for EDA (eg medical, consumer and wireless), all major geographic regions and smaller start ups as well as larger companies. In Cadence's model, customers can subscribe to its Hosted Design Solutions either by the project or by time frame. The solutions the customer requires (which could include logic design, functional verification, custom IC design and others) are configured to fit the customer's design flow and the design is still wholly owned by the customer at the end of the day. Cadence cites cost savings as the primary driving factor for its Hosted Design Solutions customers – reduced administrative costs of setting up and maintaining EDA solutions at their own sites and faster start up time, since the software is preconfigured to fit the customer's design flow. Other cost savings might stem from the scalability of the solution (where users only pay for licenses needed, though this model already exists in EDA) and potentially less hardware/network infrastructure. True, the potential for savings are there. And previous concerns about using hosted services, namely internet security and bandwidth concerns, are no longer show stoppers. Further, more types of software applications are going online, providing a wealth of user and vendor experiences out there. But the concern about giving away too much of the company's IP is still out there. After all, the user is opening up its design flows and methodologies to others outside the company. So what is the prognosis for SaaS and hosted solutions in EDA? It's an approach that will work for some users, but not all. For those users that want to delve into it, several questions need to be asked of their SaaS vendor, including: • Where will the design be stored? Will it be locally stored or at the vendor's site? • How is authorised/unauthorised access to the design handled? • How often will tools be updated and will users receive enough advance notice? This is an issue that cannot be overlooked. If a design works with one version of a tool and compensates for known bugs in the tool, there is no certainty that it will work with an updated version of the same tool that has fixed the bugs. • Does the hosting provider have enough bandwidth to support very large file sizes? This is especially important as design files continue to get larger with each semiconductor process node. Vendor Considerations For vendors who want to delve into SaaS and hosted applications for EDA, consider the following: • Don't ignore bandwidth issues. As much as networks have increased their bandwidth capacity, the scale of EDA designs has increased tremendously. The average high end design averages 66million gates and these numbers will continue to climb with each new process node. • Although the hosted services model is well understood and deployed in corporate IT environments, and the pay per use model already exists in EDA (particularly emulation), moving EDA applications to the SaaS environment may be a little more challenging because of the complex nature of design engineering in general. • The mindset in the EDA community is that design is a core competency, especially among power users. As a result, designers are reluctant to give up control of any part of their design environment. Indeed, designers gave up some control once EDA tool purchasing and deployment went to their IT departments, but this is taking it one (giant) step further, taking it outside of the company completely. This will undoubtedly be the biggest hurdle facing those vendors looking to play in the EDA SaaS arena. · Companies are continuing to look for ways to reduce spending on tools, as well as deal with ever present time to market pressures. Properly deployed, SaaS and hosted applications may find a foothold in certain segments of the EDA community. Sharon Tan is a principal analyst with Gary Smith EDA