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The EDA tools are often given for almost free to startups, as the vendors recognise startups can't start without them, and if they are too expensive to a fledgl

The EDA tools are often given for almost free to startups, as the vendors recognise startups can't start without them, and if they are too expensive to a fledgling company they are shooting themselves in the foot. Startups get the tools, but not the support. I'm in HW chip design and use EDA tools daily, and while they are not always great, I would not be as concerned about them for a startup as I would getting enough money to create the first prototype, fab costs, lab equipment costs, man years of engineering, and of course the IP.

monocasa 6y ago
You need the support though to know why the crappy tools are breaking your design and be able to hack around it.
- tails4e 6y ago
  Yes and no, if a startup has experienced designers, they can work around issues. I've often done this and I have access to AEs, as to get an issue resolved externally takes more time than a bit of debug on why the tool is not doing what you want. Rarely is the issue an actual tool bug, but often a tool quirk with some esoteric solution. The issue with most of these EDA tools is their million configuration variables, and that they rarely do something useful out of the box. And experienced designer knows the edges on this and will work fine without support.
mhh__ 6y ago
The tools are still kind of rubbish in the sense that for many startups in software their edge could literally just be having an extremely good internal development flow whereas EDA stuff seems to be written solely to get from A to B. I haven't seen the deep end of the software as you get closer to the fab, but I'm guessing it's worse.
- tails4e 6y ago
  A HW startup will not be suddenly successful because of their EDA flow. They could however fail badly if they have their EDA incorrectly setup, as if your chip STA flow was incorrect and you have hold time issues on silicon, you just blew 6 months+ and a few million. It would be critical to have an STA expert for that reason, as well as a solid sign-off process before tape out.
ancharm 6y ago
Though they are essentially given for free, stitching everything together is still a lot of work. Getting the tools as an individual is not really possible (with the exception of Mentor sometimes..) the open source software ecosystem needed around every tool is non-existent, which means that each company ends up recreating their own scripts and flows each time you want to design a new IP.

monocasa 6y ago

You need the support though to know why the crappy tools are breaking your design and be able to hack around it.

tails4e 6y ago
Yes and no, if a startup has experienced designers, they can work around issues. I've often done this and I have access to AEs, as to get an issue resolved externally takes more time than a bit of debug on why the tool is not doing what you want. Rarely is the issue an actual tool bug, but often a tool quirk with some esoteric solution. The issue with most of these EDA tools is their million configuration variables, and that they rarely do something useful out of the box. And experienced designer knows the edges on this and will work fine without support.

mhh__ 6y ago

The tools are still kind of rubbish in the sense that for many startups in software their edge could literally just be having an extremely good internal development flow whereas EDA stuff seems to be written solely to get from A to B. I haven't seen the deep end of the software as you get closer to the fab, but I'm guessing it's worse.

tails4e 6y ago
A HW startup will not be suddenly successful because of their EDA flow. They could however fail badly if they have their EDA incorrectly setup, as if your chip STA flow was incorrect and you have hold time issues on silicon, you just blew 6 months+ and a few million. It would be critical to have an STA expert for that reason, as well as a solid sign-off process before tape out.

ancharm 6y ago

Though they are essentially given for free, stitching everything together is still a lot of work. Getting the tools as an individual is not really possible (with the exception of Mentor sometimes..) the open source software ecosystem needed around every tool is non-existent, which means that each company ends up recreating their own scripts and flows each time you want to design a new IP.