Financial Perspective on EDA Companies

Update: Added Magma link.

Ms. Sramana Mitra has posted a series of articles with her commentary on how EDA vendors look financially. Take a look at her posts on

• Cadence
• Magma
• Mentor Graphics
• Synopsys

May you all have a restful year in and wishing all peace and prosperity in 2008.

John

EDN Hot 100 Products of 2007: EDA

Whoever said EDA is boring? From a technical innovation standpoint, it is pretty exciting. From a financial standpoint, not so much. :-)

EDN Hot 100 Products of 2007: EDA - 12/14/2007 - EDN: "EDN's editors offer up their annual list of the year's 100 most significant ICs, components, buses, boards, EDA tools, power devices, test instruments, and more."

I've worked with a couple of these, and plan to learn more about the others.

Happy Birthday Mr. Transistor

It has aged very well, and is helping pay a lot of our paychecks. We truly stand on the shoulders of the giants who invented and advanced such a seemingly simple yet amazingly versatile and powerful device: The transistor turns 60 | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

Along the same lines, Fairchild, the first big semiconductor company and training ground for countless startup founders, recently celebrated its 50th birthday.

I've often thought that if you really, really grokked the transistor, you'd be all set to contribute to large swaths of electrical engineering. I'm certainly not as facile with all its behaviors as I'd like. How long would it take to really understand, thoroughly and intuitively? A year? Four years? A career?

What a Motley Crew

I just had to share The Programmer Dress Code for the fine pictures therein. These guys are the giants of Computer Science! I recognize most all the names, though not many faces. I guess they're not too photogenic. :-) I recognized Knuth, Stallman, and Wozniak.

What I especially love is that as I write this, I am sporting a beard and am wearing a red plaid flannel shirt! If I just would let my hair go wild, perhaps my scripting will improve.

Cadence Cutting

Sounds like some cutbacks are happening at Cadence. There's this post on the Yahoo! message board, and also rumors of cancellation of a "high-profile" project. I don't follow the stock closely, but it dropped over 20% in the past six weeks, much worse than its EDA peers. The stock price drop coincides with their last quarterly earnings report. These are always hard for me as an engineer to decipher. It says nothing about Cadence's technology, and is all about a "new licensing model". I just know that if I had a nickel for every time an EDA vendor changed their licensing model, my kid might be getting a PlayStation 3 for Christmas. ;-)

Anyone know details of what's happening at Cadence? I wonder how other EDA vendors faring with projects and hiring?

Bubble 2.0 Video

This funny well-done Bubble 2.0 video has just surfaced: Too bad all the hype is about Web 2.0 instead of EDA and Semiconductors. :-( Hey, at least we produce something tangible.

This video itself is inspired by this excellent video of Billy Joel's song.