Cadence launches hosted design service
1 min read
Setting up a leading edge semiconductor design flow is not a trivial business, neither is it cheap. According to Vishal Kapoor, Group Marketing Director, Solutions and Services Marketing, for Cadence Design Systems, for every $1 spent on buying EDA software, more than $1 is spent on inserting the tools into design flows, and running and managing them.
“That cost was accepted at one time,” he claimed, “but companies are now looking at costs more closely.”
Responding with a move that resurrects an idea of the early 2000s, Cadence is launching a hosted design service, targeted mainly at companies opening new locations and at start ups. Apart from the time taken to get an internet connection up and running, the Cadence design service is available within a day and is sold on three month blocks.
Apart from providing the required software, Cadence says it will also develop a design methodology for the user.
The service will be hosted on a secure global network which, Kapoor claims, will have a downtime of less than two hours a year. Despite the fact that designs will be hosted on remote servers, Kapoor says latency will be ‘milliseconds’. “Users are looking for instant response and it will be the same experience as using a desktop,” he insisted.
However, the service is not being aimed at leading edge companies. “At the lower end, designs will be a few hundred thousand gates,” he believed, “but, typically, they will be a few million gates and upwards and targeted at one or two nodes behind the leading edge.”
