electronic design automation

Electronic design automation (EDA) is the category of tools for designing and producing electronic systems ranging from printed circuit boards (PCBs) to integrated circuits. This is sometimes referred to as ECAD (electronic computer-aided design). The term EDA is also used as an umbrella term for computer-aided engineering, computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing of electronics in the discipline of electrical engineering. This usage probably originates in the IEEE Design Automation Technical Committee. EDA has rapidly increased in importance with the continuous scaling of semiconductor technology. (See: Moore's Law.) EDA companies clients are primarily semiconductor companies that design chips using EDA software. But also physical manufacturers (fabs), largest of which are TSMC, IBM, Intel.

Product areas (incomplete)

EDA is divided into many (sometimes overlapping) sub-areas. They mostly align with the path of manufacturing of the chips from design to mask generation.

Design and Architecture: design the chip's schematics, output in Verilog, VHDL, Spice and other formats.
Simulation: simulate circuit's work and detect any shortcomings
Place-n-Route, PR: placement of circuit elements on the chip layout, route all wires.
Physical Verification, PV: checking if design is physically manufacturable and resulting chips will not have any functioning preventing physical defects and meet original specifications

Design Rules Checking, DRC: checks number of rules of geometric and connectivity nature specified by manufacturer
Layout Versus Schematic, LVS: -- checks if designed chip layout matches schematics from specification

Mask Data Preparation, MDP -- generation of actual lithography mask used to physically manufacture the chip

Resolution Enhancement Techniques, RET: methods of increasing of quality of final mask

Optical Proximity Correction, OPC: up-front compensation for diffraction and interference effects occurring later when chip is manufactured using this mask

Mask Generation: generation of flat mask image from hierarchical design

Largest companies

Market Value !! Logo
Cadence Design Systems	San Jose, California	$3.5 billion
Synopsys	Mountain View, California	$2.5 billion
Mentor Graphics	Wilsonville, Oregon	$1.0 billion
Magma Design Automation Inc	Santa Clara, California	$387 million

External links

EDA Consortium
EDA Industry Working Groups - Non-Profit standards organisation
EDA Cafe - Commercial web site trying to serve as a portal to the EDA industry
DAC - The Design Automation Conference is a premier event for Electronic Design Automation
gEDA - Free Software EDA system

<< Previous

Word Browser

Next >>

google hacks
tara calishain
yp
yellow pages (computing)
nis
stockholm school
french consulate
network information service
history of northern ireland
gothenburg school of economics and commercial law
the relapse

lund school of economics and management
economic history of britain
french colonial empire
ample
schwalm eder
the market for lemons
ali ahmad jalali
thomas arnold
borken
yusuf nooristani
mentor graphics

eda
anwar ul haq ahadi
a1 road
northrop corporation
in line expansion
lule university of technology
northrop grumman
edirne
lund institute of technology
linkping institute of technology
ume institute of technology

jrgen trittin
grub (search engine)
uppsala school of engineering
green jay
looksmart
swedish university of agricultural sciences
karolinska institute
moshe sharett
history of the halfpenny
sekaninaite
go ask alice