!!! "It's not a BUG, jcooley@TheWorld.com
/o o\ / it's a FEATURE!" (508) 429-4357
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\ - / INDUSTRY GADFLY: "The FPGA EDA Slums"
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by John Cooley, EE Times Columnist
Holliston Poor Farm, P.O. Box 6222, Holliston, MA 01746-6222
When I reported last month that Aart de Geus, the CEO of Synopsys, had
exiled VHDL to the small-money FPGA world while the new Verilog was going
to dominate the big-money ASIC world, two users emailed me that FPGAs were
going to take over ASICs anyway.
"I saw this as a fairly desperate attempt by Aart to get System Verilog
acceptance," wrote David Bishop of Kodak. "People just don't do very many
ASICs any more. They do FPGAs. FPGAs are far more cost effective these
days. Most FPGA designs are done with VHDL."
Andy Jones of Lockheed Martin pretty much agreed with David while also
challenging me on my "small-money" reference to FPGAs.
And for the sake of the EDA industry, I hope David and Andy are wrong.
For 2001, Dataquest reported that the ASIC market was $16.6 billion while
the FPGA market was $2.6 billion.
What's more interesting is that the 2001 ASIC EDA market was $2.2 billion
while the FPGA EDA market was $91.1 million. Nope, that's not a mistake.
It's ASIC EDA and billion versus FPGA EDA and million. Do the math and
you'll see that for every dollar spent on an ASIC project, roughly 12 cents
of it goes to an EDA vendor. For every dollar spent on a FPGA project,
roughly 3.4 cents goes to an EDA vendor. Not good.
It's the old free milk and a cow story according to Gary Smith, the Senior
EDA Analyst at Dataquest. "Altera and Xilinx have fouled their own nest.
Their free tools spoil the FPGA EDA market," says Gary. "EDA vendors know
that there's no money to be made in FPGA tools."
So FPGAs are the slums of the EDA world. If design does go all FPGA as
David and Andy warn, the $2.3 billion EDA industry will shrink down to $628
million. That's what 3.4 percent versus 12 percent can do to you. Ouch.
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John Cooley runs the E-mail Synopsys Users Group (ESNUG), is a
contract ASIC designer, and loves hearing from engineers at
"jcooley@TheWorld.com" or (508) 429-4357.
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