I agree that's true for chip design tools, but I was mostly thinking board-level design and above. Although I think there is opportunity in chip design for hig

I agree that's true for chip design tools, but I was mostly thinking board-level design and above. Although I think there is opportunity in chip design for higher level tools not tied to chip design. To things spring to mind. After the Pentium fdiv bug, Intel hired the author of the HOL Light theorem prover. He formalized the FPU of a later chip. I'm also thinking of high-level synthesis tools like Arvind's Bluespec.