Nearly everyone agrees that the EDA industry's next greener pastures will come from Asia's emerging electronic design landscape. Industry observers in the region generally acknowledge that EDA will really take off in Asia once chipmakers here move beyond 0.13µm process geometries.

Moving to smaller geometries needs mastery of the physical design, and that's where EDA companies play a crucial role. EDA firms, after all, don't make money on volumes of chips sold, but on chip-design starts.

Where else can we get a better sense of EDA fortunes in Asia than in China, where design activities are doubling every year?

Mainland China, with its mushrooming semiconductor design houses, would seem like a dreamland for EDA firms. But as Wilson Yu, senior vice president of marketing at IP Core Technologies, puts it, the EDA industry needs to invest in the future. IP Core is one of the largest buyers of intellectual property (IP) products in the mainland.

Yu says that many of the local design houses simply can't buy EDA tools, even at discounted prices. The biggest cost for these small design outfits is software. "It's a life and death problem for the IC design startups, but the EDA stalwarts can help in their quest for survival and, subsequently, put them on a path to success."

And these startups may not necessarily need cutting-edge EDA tools; they need simple tools. Yu recommends that the EDA companies give IC design houses free tools for a start, and once they are in a stable shape—say after three years—and have money to buy EDA tools, it could be business as usual.

For the other half of the equation, Chris Ho, marketing director of Cadence's Asia-Pacific operation, says that EDA is a commercial outfit and has to make economic sense. "There has to be a business model," he said.

EDA is a knowledge-intensive industry and IP protection is vital to its existence. Ho acknowledges, however, that the EDA industry has some exciting prospects if IC design houses do better in mainland China.

Here, Cadence's strategy is two-fold. First, the EDA firm has gotten involved in setting up training programs for Chinese universities. It's also working with government ministries in launching nationwide programs for professional training.

And Cadence is part of the collaborative efforts between the EDA industry and the Chinese government to help incubators come along. Ho says that Cadence is proactively working with a number of incubators in facilitating necessary software tools.

For direct support, EDA outfits like Cadence are looking for a creative model to work with local design firms. Such efforts, Ho says, will go hand in hand with the Chinese government's push to establish a legal framework for IP protection.

Despite a maze of delicate issues on both sides of the equation, it's hard to overlook the momentum building in the IC design space in mainland China and, for that matter, the EDA industry's evolving role in this critical undertaking.

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