New-Tech Europe Magazine | April 2017

Solving problems together has always been the case to some extent. When I was one of Cadence's co-CTOs, I used to end up in arguments with the VP Engineering of one of our big customers. He would complain that our software was buggy for leading edge nodes. I would tell him to use an old version, but we both knew that was impossible; the capabilities were not available in the old version. Then we would have some test cases in the new node before we released the software, and we'd test it better. But this was also a non-starter since the test cases can't be produced until the software is - if not up and running - at least up and staggering. So actually the situation was the same back then, but less well acknowledged. The startup approach no longer works. This is partially due to the investment climate, but also because the problems to be solved (such as coloring vias) require you to have a full flow already. There is no niche for the "via coloring company," no matter how compelling the technology. It has to work in layout, place and route, physical verification and so on, so you have to have it all already.

a bit different. Each new process generation brings new challenges (FinFET, double patterning etc) and so any leading edge customer has no option but to adopt the new version. Everyone - Cadence and the customer - knows there will be issues. Everyone knows we will all have to work together to solve them. There are still one or two startups in little niches, but they are the exception and far less numerous than twenty years ago when DAC would not just fill part of the south hall at Moscone, but all of it. And the North Hall, And use the corridors in between as overflow space for still more companies.

technology, the salesforce would not sell it and it would fail. You can't get a point tool started with the farmer approach. There are only a couple of products I can think of back in that era that were developed by big EDA companies (once they were out of their own startup phase) that became successful; these were Calibre and PrimeTime (and even that second one is dubious since the #1 product in the space, Motive, was acquired and shut down, leaving a vacuum to move into). Today I think the situation today is actually

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