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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

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 4y ago
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.
- iron2disulfide 4y ago
  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.
  - artisanspam 4y ago
    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.
  - nsteel 4y ago
    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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- buildbot 4y ago
  And Autodesk is a detestably evil company to boot.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  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.
- bsder 4y ago
  Unfortunately the OP is off by two orders of magnitude. Most VLSI EDA tool licenses start at about $100K per seat per year and go up from there. If EDA tools were only $1K, we'd have lots of custom chips since a fab run in an old technology is actually $10K-$20K nowadays.
  - artisanspam 4y ago
    It depends on what tool licenses you're talking about. A single license for Questa is in the thousands of dollars range. But lots of VIPs or backend tools will be a lot more.
MayeulC 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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.
  - jdougan 4y ago
    I know almost nothing about this area. Just how much effort do you think it would take to get these tools to "good enough but no more"/MVP? Days/Weeks/Months/Years/Decades etc.?
    - artisanspam 4y ago
      Aside from what was already mentioned in another comment, one of the largest things lacking in this area is not having dedicated support. These tools are maintained by only a few individuals, and if you need a feature of bug fix, you either need to implement it yourself or wait a long time for a fix. If you need a feature or bug fix from Cadence, Synopsys, or Mentor, I've usually had releases that fix the issue within a week or two. The article seems to imply that EDA vendors contributing to a common open source project is where EDA ought to go moving forward. That's a step in the right direction because it'd fix this support issue I mention. But it probably won't fix the cost issue.
    - prbs23 4y ago
      From what I have seen of both the open source and commercial EDA software, I think it would take a well funded team somewhere around 4 years of development to catch up with the current state of the art. If we're talking about EDA emulation hardware, probably more like 6 years, since these usually have custom Basics designed for them. Maybe you could cut a year off of those and still have something that is good enough but not state of the art.

digdugdirk 4y ago

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.

iron2disulfide 4y ago
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.
- artisanspam 4y ago
  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.
- nsteel 4y ago
  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.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
buildbot 4y ago
And Autodesk is a detestably evil company to boot.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
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.
bsder 4y ago
Unfortunately the OP is off by two orders of magnitude. Most VLSI EDA tool licenses start at about $100K per seat per year and go up from there. If EDA tools were only $1K, we'd have lots of custom chips since a fab run in an old technology is actually $10K-$20K nowadays.
- artisanspam 4y ago
  It depends on what tool licenses you're talking about. A single license for Questa is in the thousands of dollars range. But lots of VIPs or backend tools will be a lot more.

MayeulC 4y ago

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 4y ago
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.
- jdougan 4y ago
  I know almost nothing about this area. Just how much effort do you think it would take to get these tools to "good enough but no more"/MVP? Days/Weeks/Months/Years/Decades etc.?
  - artisanspam 4y ago
    Aside from what was already mentioned in another comment, one of the largest things lacking in this area is not having dedicated support. These tools are maintained by only a few individuals, and if you need a feature of bug fix, you either need to implement it yourself or wait a long time for a fix. If you need a feature or bug fix from Cadence, Synopsys, or Mentor, I've usually had releases that fix the issue within a week or two. The article seems to imply that EDA vendors contributing to a common open source project is where EDA ought to go moving forward. That's a step in the right direction because it'd fix this support issue I mention. But it probably won't fix the cost issue.
  - prbs23 4y ago
    From what I have seen of both the open source and commercial EDA software, I think it would take a well funded team somewhere around 4 years of development to catch up with the current state of the art. If we're talking about EDA emulation hardware, probably more like 6 years, since these usually have custom Basics designed for them. Maybe you could cut a year off of those and still have something that is good enough but not state of the art.