[HN Gopher] The Next Incarnation of EDA ___________________________________________________________________ The Next Incarnation of EDA Author : mindcrime Score : 19 points Date : 2022-09-13 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (semiengineering.com) (TXT) w3m dump (semiengineering.com) | buildbot wrote: | I really hope Lattice ends up leaning into the open source | symbiflow toolchains, it is amazingly awesome to have a decently | sized FPGA that run Linux, that could even self host it's own | firmware compilation. (VERY SLOWLY!) | jstx1 wrote: | Electronic design automation apparently, not exploratory data | analysis. | artisanspam wrote: | I don't think that most software engineers understand how they | good they have it with access to open source software. The most | apt comparison I can think of to EDA is a mathematical computing | environment (MATLAB, Mathematica, Maple, etc.) but an order of | magnitude more constrained. | | _Everything_ in EDA is licensed. Simulators, emulators, | synthesis, IDEs, formal verification, coverage, waveform viewers, | and most post-silicon tools. You work with Intel /ARM? Any tools | they make are licensed, too. You can't make CI/CD pipelines when | you only have 3 $1000 compiler licenses for your whole company. | Your JetBrains suite that costs $300/year for dozens of IDEs? | It's not uncommon for HDL IDE licenses to be >$1000 for a single | user. | | Contrast that to most traditional software development, where the | cost is solely in how much compute you're using. | | I know that open-source EDA doesn't necessarily mean FOSS EDA, | but that "free" part _really_ is what 's needed here. | digdugdirk wrote: | And here I am designing physical consumer products thinking the | people in EDA have it good. | | A single license of CAD software with an FEA analysis add-on | can easily run you $15k. Then the thought of shelling out for | physical product testing will make you cry yourself to sleep. | buildbot wrote: | And Autodesk is a detestably evil company to boot. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | Professional electronic design tools go through the | stratosphere on pricing. There is lower demand than | mechanical CAD tooling so they have to charge more to cover | development costs. Lower demand also means that open source | offerings usually pale in comparison to pro level tools from | 20 years ago or more. | iron2disulfide wrote: | The $1k figure quoted by OP is not indicative of the average | price of licenses in my experience. There are plenty of tools | that are $15k+ in the EDA world, and various engineers in | chip design orgs are always battling about who gets to use | them and when. There are whole teams in big SoC design shops | dedicated to managing and procuring licenses. | | I was pretty far removed from the license procurement and | budgeting aspect of my last chip design job, but IIRC we were | in the multi-millions per year in various EDA tool licenses. | That figure may or may not have included IP licenses for pre- | designed off-the-shelf subsystems. | nsteel wrote: | Same. We pay millions of dollars for our simulator | licenses. Same again for physical design/layout licenses. | These are for the standard ('best') industry tools, no IP. | No idea what you get for $1k. | artisanspam wrote: | I hadn't even brought up IP licensing but you're right. | That's another order of magnitude of cost and it's | incredibly important. | [deleted] | MayeulC wrote: | You can get pretty far with yosys, icarus verilog, various | spice simulators and gtkwave, but I agree. | | At least, interchange formats are pretty well specified | (netlists, HDL, waveforms...), maybe except for the proprietary | "Open Access" format. | artisanspam wrote: | If you suggest using those tools for most industry | semiconductor work you'll be laughed out of the room. I wish | it wasn't the case, but these tools aren't good enough for | most industry use cases. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-13 23:01 UTC)