Analog EDA is Nearer to Reality
by Paul McGoldrick
I have never envied the technology journalists who have had to report on
the EDA circuit. Whenever I saw any insights into EDA there was a nasty
political threshold to it which stank of a few players chasing very large
amounts of money on individual sales - and being very heavy on the he-said/she-said
routine. Fortunately for me the words analog and EDA have somehow seemed
rather disparate and the few attempts over the years to get analog EDA tools
that actually worked as advertised became dinosaurs to the designers who
tried to use them.
But things had to get closer to operational product and although most experienced analog design engineers will still glare at EDA vendor representatives for wasting their precious time, they understand they need their tools to a more or less extent. Design cycles are pushed so tight that the ability to get in and out with a proven design becomes more and more important. Libraries help, of course, but the tried-and-fixed analog designer still feels that his design must be customized by him. "Leave the libraries to the new designers," they would say, "or the digital designers who have to finish the analog I/O design."
The vendors are coming to realize that the challenges are in first getting in the door to show their tools, and in then being able to offer tools which work to the analog vanity rather than trying to change a rather fixed mental, and rather stubborn, culture.
One vendor that I sat down with recently has taken the lessons to heart and will soon be offering expansions to its product line that take the analog designer even further into the choice process associated with maximizing design. And it is in those areas that the designers will be won over as individuals and as design teams: If you can tell him the optimal size of his transistors in all the day-to-day design tasks that I throw at a tool, and they turn out correct, you can persuade the designer to vote for a buy. Convincing anybody of the commonsense of the business equation will also be easy - it will be like math-for dummies - but there is going to be a major obstacle at any number of analog semiconductor companies from the senior design managers.
I remember from my time managing the sales force of a company manufacturing state-of-the-art broadcast equipment that we had to approach users in different ways. We would arrange separate demonstrations for the "money" - the man signing the purchase order - and the users. Doing a single demo in front of a combined group always seemed to be a disaster: When the manager appeared not to understand the technology behind the product the staff would snigger in the background, which lost the order; when the manager didn't understand the technology and didn't ask questions (because he knows they will snigger) the order was also lost. A separate demo allowed the manager to cover the technology bases with a sympathetic audience.
That is not going to be the case with all the design teams that an analog EDA tool vendor meets, and some companies will be dramatically more accepting than others, and real pressure comes when the major players buy, and use, the tools.
There are some interesting things en-route to us from the likes of Analog Design Automation, Barcelona Design, Cadence Design Systems - and that's just the ABC of others out there, large and small - but I have made a promise to myself that I will not allow the analog EDA arena to become political on my watch. I will not back away from controversy, but I will not wilt in my views to serve others' interests.
So, as it all happens - at last - give it to me straight and I will report
it straight. If the market bursts open to help the analog design engineer
you can be absolutely sure that analogZONE
will help get the message across to our readers, the best way we can. And
then others will envy us.