Platform innovation will drive EDA

An interesting take on the EDA industry evolution and look into the trend by Leon Stok, director of EDA for IBM’s Systems and Technology Group in a keynote address at the International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD).

Stok identified three previous innovation eras in the EDA industry — those of invention, implementation, and integration. The fourth era, he said, is the one we’re about to enter and is centered on design implementation “platforms”. To make platform innovation happen, Stok said, we will need to define standards as APIs, not ASCII formats. This will allow tools to talk to each other, instead of producing data that another tool can barely read, he noted.

With APIs, smaller companies with innovative potential solutions for the UDSM technology challenges will have a more level playing field. Each can plug in their solutions and then let the market forces decide. It will also pave the way for the bigger players as they too can focus on the overall user flow with a market decided mix of their own in-house tools or point tools from other companies.

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