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Electronic Design Automation (EDA) is the category of tools for designing and producing electronic systems ranging from printed circuit board
Printed circuit board

A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using Conductor pathways, or signal traces, industrial etchinged from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate....
s (PCBs) to integrated circuit
Integrated circuit

In electronics, an integrated circuit is a miniaturized electronic circuit that has been manufactured in the surface of a thin Wafer of semiconductor material....
s. This is sometimes referred to as ECAD (electronic computer-aided design
Computer-aided design

Computer-Aided Design is the use of computer technology to aid in the design and particularly the drafting of a part or product, including entire buildings....
) or just CAD. (Printed circuit boards and wire wrap
Wire wrap

Wire wrap is a technique for constructing small numbers of complex electronics assemblies. It is an alternative technique to the use of small runs of printed circuit boards, and has the advantage of being easily changed for prototyping work....
 both contain specialized discussions of the EDA used for those.)

term EDA is also used as an umbrella term for computer-aided engineering
Computer-aided engineering

File:Plasticity.jpgComputer-aided engineering is the use of information technology to support engineers in tasks such as analysis, Computer simulation, design, manufacture, planning, diagnosis, and repair....
, computer-aided design
Computer-aided design

Computer-Aided Design is the use of computer technology to aid in the design and particularly the drafting of a part or product, including entire buildings....
 and computer-aided manufacturing
Computer-aided manufacturing

Computer-aided manufacturing is the use of computer-based software tools that assist engineers and machinists in manufacturing or prototyping product components....
 of electronics
Electronics

Electronics refers to the flow of charge through nonmetal electrical conductor , whereas electrical refers to the flow of charge through metal electrical conductor....
 in the discipline of electrical engineering
Electrical engineering

Electrical engineering, sometimes referred to as electrical and electronic engineering, is a field of engineering that deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism....
.






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Electronic Design Automation (EDA) is the category of tools for designing and producing electronic systems ranging from printed circuit board
Printed circuit board

A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using Conductor pathways, or signal traces, industrial etchinged from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate....
s (PCBs) to integrated circuit
Integrated circuit

In electronics, an integrated circuit is a miniaturized electronic circuit that has been manufactured in the surface of a thin Wafer of semiconductor material....
s. This is sometimes referred to as ECAD (electronic computer-aided design
Computer-aided design

Computer-Aided Design is the use of computer technology to aid in the design and particularly the drafting of a part or product, including entire buildings....
) or just CAD. (Printed circuit boards and wire wrap
Wire wrap

Wire wrap is a technique for constructing small numbers of complex electronics assemblies. It is an alternative technique to the use of small runs of printed circuit boards, and has the advantage of being easily changed for prototyping work....
 both contain specialized discussions of the EDA used for those.)

Terminology

The term EDA is also used as an umbrella term for computer-aided engineering
Computer-aided engineering

File:Plasticity.jpgComputer-aided engineering is the use of information technology to support engineers in tasks such as analysis, Computer simulation, design, manufacture, planning, diagnosis, and repair....
, computer-aided design
Computer-aided design

Computer-Aided Design is the use of computer technology to aid in the design and particularly the drafting of a part or product, including entire buildings....
 and computer-aided manufacturing
Computer-aided manufacturing

Computer-aided manufacturing is the use of computer-based software tools that assist engineers and machinists in manufacturing or prototyping product components....
 of electronics
Electronics

Electronics refers to the flow of charge through nonmetal electrical conductor , whereas electrical refers to the flow of charge through metal electrical conductor....
 in the discipline of electrical engineering
Electrical engineering

Electrical engineering, sometimes referred to as electrical and electronic engineering, is a field of engineering that deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism....
. This usage probably originates in the IEEE Design Automation Technical Committee.

This article describes EDA specifically for electronics, and concentrates on EDA used for designing integrated circuits. The segment of the industry that must use EDA are chip designers at semiconductor companies. Large chips are too complex to design by hand.

Growth of EDA

EDA for electronics has rapidly increased in importance with the continuous scaling of semiconductor
Semiconductor

A semiconductor is a material that has electrical conductivity between those of a Electrical conductor and an electrical insulation; it can vary over that wide range either permanently or dynamically....
 technology. (See Moore's Law
Moore's Law

Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware. Since the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958, the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has increased exponential growth, doubling approximately every two years....
.) Some users are foundry
Foundry (electronics)

In the microelectronics industry, a semiconductor fabrication plant is a factory where devices such as integrated circuits are manufactured.A business that operates a semiconductor fab for the purpose of fabricating the designs of other companies, such as fabless semiconductor company, is known as a foundry....
 operators, who operate the semiconductor fabrication
Semiconductor fabrication

Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to create chips, the integrated circuits that are present in everyday electrical and electronics devices....
 facilities, or "fabs", and design-service companies who use EDA software to evaluate an incoming design for manufacturing readiness. EDA tools are also used for programming design functionality into FPGAs.

History

Before EDA, integrated circuits were designed by hand, and manually laid out. Some advanced shops used geometric software to generate the tapes for the Gerber photoplotter
Photoplotter

A photoplotter is an electro-mechanical-optical machine that produces a latent image on a media, usually high-contrast monochromatic photographic film, using a light source under computer control....
, but even those copied digital recordings of mechanically-drawn components. The process was fundamentally graphic, with the translation from electronics to graphics done manually. The best known company from this era was Calma
Calma

Calma Company, based in Sunnyvale, California, was, between 1965 and 1988, a vendor of digitizers and minicomputer-based graphics systems targeted at the cartographic and electronic, mechanical and architectural design markets....
, whose GDSII
GDSII

GDS II stream format, common acronym GDSII, is a database file format which is the de facto industry standard for data exchange of integrated circuit or IC layout artwork....
 format survives.

By the mid-70s, developers were starting to automate the design, and not just the drafting. The first placement and routing (Place and route
Place and route

Place and Route is a stage in the design of Printed Circuit Boards, Integrated Circuits, and Field programmable gate arrays. As implied by the name, it is composed of two steps, placement and routing ....
) tools were developed. The proceedings of the Design Automation Conference
Design Automation Conference

The Design Automation Conference, or DAC, is a combination of a technical conference and a trade show, both specializing in electronic design automation....
 cover much of this era.

The next era began more or less with the publication of "Introduction to VLSI Systems" by Carver Mead
Carver Mead

Professor Carver Andress Mead is a prominent United States computer scientist. He is the Gordon and Betty Moore professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology , having taught there for over 40 years....
 and Lynn Conway
Lynn Conway

Lynn Conway is an United States computer science, electrical engineering, inventor, transwoman, and activist for the transsexual community.Conway is notable for several technical achievements, including the Mead & Conway revolution in VLSI design, which incubated an emerging electronic design automation industry....
 in 1980. This groundbreaking text advocated chip design with programming languages that compiled to silicon. The immediate result was a hundredfold increase in the complexity of the chips that could be designed, with improved access to design verification
Functional verification

Functional verification, in electronic design automation, is the task of verifying that the digital circuit conforms to specification. In everyday terms, functional verification attempts to answer the question "Does this proposed design do what is intended?" This is a complex task, and takes the majority of time and effort in most large ele...
 tools that used logic simulation
Logic simulation

Logic simulation is the use of a computer program to simulate the operation of a digital circuit. Logic simulation is the primary tool used for verifying the logical correctness of a hardware design....
. Often the chips were not just easier to lay out, but more correct as well, because their designs could be simulated more thoroughly before construction.

The earliest EDA tools were produced academically, and were in the public domain. One of the most famous was the "Berkeley VLSI Tools Tarball", a set of UNIX utilities used to design early VLSI systems. Still widely used is the Espresso heuristic logic minimizer
Espresso heuristic logic minimizer

The Espresso logic minimizer is a widely used computer program using heuristic and specific algorithms for efficiently reducing the complexity of digital electronic gate circuits....
 and Magic
Magic (software)

Magic is a Very-large-scale integration layout tool originally written by John Ousterhout and his graduate students at UC Berkeley during the 1980s....
.

Another crucial development was the formation of MOSIS
MOSIS

MOSIS is probably the oldest integrated circuit foundry service and one of the first Internet services other than supercomputer services and basic infrastructure such as E-mail or File Transfer Protocol....
, a consortium of universities and fabricators that developed an inexpensive way to train student chip designers by producing real integrated circuits. The basic idea was to use reliable, low-cost, relatively low-technology IC processes, and pack a large number of projects per wafer, with just a few copies of each projects' chips. Cooperating fabricators either donated the processed wafers, or sold them at cost, seeing the program as helpful to their own long-term growth.

1981 marks the beginning of EDA as an industry. For many years, the larger electronic companies, such as Hewlett Packard, Tektronix
Tektronix

Tektronix, Inc. is a United States company best known for its test and measurement equipment such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment....
, and Intel, had pursued EDA internally. In 1981, managers and developers spun out of these companies to concentrate on EDA as a business. Daisy Systems
Daisy Systems

Daisy Systems Corporation incorporated in 1981 in Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California, was a computer-aided engineering company, a pioneer in the Electronic design automation industry....
, Mentor Graphics
Mentor Graphics

Mentor Graphics, Inc is a United States-based multinational corporation dealing in electronic design automation for electrical engineering and electronics, as of 2004, ranked third in the EDA industry it helped create....
, and Valid Logic Systems
Valid Logic Systems

Valid Logic Systems was one of the first commercial EDA electronic design automation companies. It was founded in the early 1980s, along with Daisy Systems Corporation and Mentor Graphics, collectively known as DMV....
 were all founded around this time, and collectively referred to as DMV. Within a few years there were many companies specializing in EDA, each with a slightly different emphasis.

In 1986, Verilog
Verilog

In the semiconductor and electronic design industry, Verilog is a hardware description language used to model Electronics#Electronic systems. Verilog HDL, not to be confused with VHDL, is most commonly used in the design, verification, and implementation of Digital circuit logic chips at the Register transfer level level of Abstraction...
, a popular high-level design language, was first introduced as a hardware description language by Gateway. In 1987, the U.S. Department of Defense funded creation of VHDL as a specification language. Simulators quickly followed these introductions, permitting direct simulation of chip designs: executable specifications. In a few more years, back-ends were developed to perform logic synthesis.

Many of the EDA companies acquire small companies with software or other technology that can be adapted to their core business. Most of the market leaders are rather incestuous amalgamations of many smaller companies. This trend is helped by the tendency of software companies to design tools as accessories that fit naturally into a larger vendor's suite of programs (the "tool flow").

While early EDA focused on digital circuitry, many new tools incorporate analog design, and mixed systems. This is happening because there is now a trend to place entire electronic systems on a single chip
System-on-a-chip

System-on-a-chip or system on chip refers to integrating all components of a computer or other Electronics system into a single integrated circuit ....
.

Current digital flows are extremely modular (see Integrated circuit design
Integrated circuit design

Integrated circuit design, or IC design, is a subset of electrical engineering, encompassing the particular Boolean logic and circuit design techniques required to design integrated circuits, or ICs....
, Design closure
Design closure

Design closure is the process by which a integrated circuit design is modified from its initial description to meet a growing list of design constraints and objectives....
, and Design flow (EDA)
Design flow (EDA)

Design flows are the explicit combination of electronic design automation tools to accomplish the design of an integrated circuit. Moore's law has driven the entire IC implementation Register transfer level to GDSII design flows from one which uses primarily...
). The front ends produce standardized design descriptions that compile into invocations of "cells,", without regard to the cell technology. Cells implement logic or other electronic functions using a particular integrated circuit technology. Fabricators generally provide libraries of components for their production processes, with simulation models that fit standard simulation tools. Analog EDA tools are much less modular, since many more functions are required, they interact more strongly, and the components are (in general) less ideal.

Product areas


EDA is divided into many (sometimes overlapping) sub-areas. They mostly align with the path of manufacturing from design to mask generation. The following applies to chip/ASIC/FPGA construction but is very similar in character to the areas of printed circuit board design:

  • Design and Architecture: design the chip's schematic
    Schematic

    A schematic is a diagram that represents the elements of a system using abstract, graphic symbols rather than realistic pictures. A schematic usually omits all details that are not relevant to the information the schematic is intended to convey, and may add unrealistic elements that aid comprehension....
    s, output in Verilog
    Verilog

    In the semiconductor and electronic design industry, Verilog is a hardware description language used to model Electronics#Electronic systems. Verilog HDL, not to be confused with VHDL, is most commonly used in the design, verification, and implementation of Digital circuit logic chips at the Register transfer level level of Abstraction...
    , VHDL, SPICE
    Spice

    A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, leaf, or vegetable used in nutritionally insignificant quantities as a food additive for the purpose of flavor, color, or as a preservative that kills harmful bacteria or prevents their growth....
     and other formats.
  • Floorplanning
    Floorplanning

    Floorplanning is the act of designing of a floorplan, which is a kind of bird's-eye view of a structure....
    : The preparation step of creating a basic die-map showing the expected locations for logic gates, power & ground planes, I/O pads, and hard macros. (This is analogous to a city-planner's activity in creating residential, commercial, and industrial zones within a city block.)
  • Logic synthesis
    Logic synthesis

    Logic synthesis is a process by which an abstract form of desired circuit behavior is turned into a design implementation in terms of logic gates....
    : translation of a chip's abstract, logical RTL
    Register transfer level

    In integrated circuit design, Register Transfer Level description is a way of describing the operation of a synchronous circuit digital circuit....
    -description (often specified via a hardware description language, or "HDL", such as Verilog or VHDL) into a discrete netlist of logic-gate (boolean
    Boolean

    Boolean , as a noun or an adjective, may refer to:* Boolean algebra , a logical calculus of truth values or set membership* Boolean algebra , a set with operations resembling logical ones...
    -logic) primitives.
  • Behavioral Synthesis, High Level Synthesis or Algorithmic Synthesis: This takes the level of abstraction higher and allows automation of the architecture exploration process. It involves the process of translating an abstract behavioral description of a design to synthesizeable RTL. The input specification is in languages like behavioral VHDL, algorithmic SystemC, C++ etc and the RTL description in VHDL/Verilog is produced as the result of synthesis.
  • Intelligent verification
    Intelligent verification

    Intelligent Verification, also referred to as intelligent testbench, is a form of functional verification used to verify that an electronic hardware design conforms to specification before device fabrication....
  • Intelligent testbench
  • IP core
    Semiconductor intellectual property core

    In electronic design a semiconductor intellectual property core, IP block, IP core, or logic core is a reusable unit of logic, cell, or chip layout design and is also the intellectual property of one party....
    s: provide pre-programmed design elements.
  • EDA database
    EDA database

    An EDA database is a database specialized for the purpose of electronic design automation. These application specific databases are required because general purpose databases have historically not provided enough performance for EDA applications....
    s: databases specialized for EDA applications. Needed since historically general purpose DBs did not provide enough performance.
  • Simulation
    Simulation

    Simulation is the imitation of some real thing, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviors of a selected physical or abstract system....
    : simulate a circuit's operation so as to verify correctness and performance.
    • Transistor Simulation
      Spice

      A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, leaf, or vegetable used in nutritionally insignificant quantities as a food additive for the purpose of flavor, color, or as a preservative that kills harmful bacteria or prevents their growth....
       – low-level transistor-simulation of a schematic/layout's behavior, accurate at device-level.
    • Logic simulation
      Logic simulation

      Logic simulation is the use of a computer program to simulate the operation of a digital circuit. Logic simulation is the primary tool used for verifying the logical correctness of a hardware design....
       – digital-simulation of an RTL or gate-netlist's digital (boolean 0/1) behavior, accurate at boolean-level.
    • Behavioral Simulation – high-level simulation of a design's architectural operation, accurate at cycle-level or interface-level.
    • Hardware emulation
      Hardware emulation

      Hardware emulation is the process of imitating the behavior of one or more pieces of hardware with another piece of hardware, typically a special purpose emulation system....
       – Use of special purpose hardware to emulate the logic of a proposed design. Can sometimes be plugged into a system in place of a yet-to-be-built chip; this is called in-circuit emulation.
  • Clock Domain Crossing Verification
    Clock Domain Crossing Verification

    Clock domain crossing verification is a vital part of today Application-specific integrated circuit designs, and hence an integral part of electronic design automation process....
     (CDC check): Similar to linting
    Lint programming tool

    In computer programming, lint was the name originally given to a particular program that flagged suspicious and non-portable constructs in C source code....
    , but these checks/tools specialize in detecting and reporting potential issues like data loss, meta-stability
    Metastability in electronics

    Metastability in electronics is the ability of a non-equilibrium electronic state to persist for a long period of time . Note this definition does not guarantee all of the properties that are sometimes demanded for a metastable state in statistical mechanics....
     due to use of multiple clock domains in the design.
  • Formal verification
    Formal verification

    In the context of hardware and software systems, formal verification is the act of Mathematical proof or disproving the correctness of intended algorithms underlying a system with respect to a certain formal specification or property, using formal methods of mathematics....
    , also model checking
    Model checking

    In the field of Logic_in_computer_science, model checking refers to the following problem:Given a simplified model of a system, test automatically whether this model meets a given specification....
    : Attempts to prove, by mathematical methods, that the system has certain desired properties, and that certain undesired effects (such as deadlock
    Deadlock

    A deadlock is a situation wherein two or more competing actions are waiting for the other to finish, and thus neither ever does. It is often seen in a paradox like 'the chicken or the egg'....
    ) cannot occur.
  • Equivalence checking
    Formal equivalence checking

    Formal equivalence checking process is a part of electronic design automation , commonly used during the development of digital circuit integrated circuits, to formally prove that two representations of a circuit design exhibit exactly the same behavior....
    : algorithmic comparison between a chip's RTL-description and synthesized gate-netlist, to ensure functional equivalency at the logical level.
  • Power analysis and optimization
    Power optimization (EDA)

    Power optimization refers to the use of electronic design automation tools to optimize the power consumption of a digital design, while preserving the functionality....
    : optimizes the circuit to reduce the power required for operation, without affecting the functionality.
  • Place and route
    Place and route

    Place and Route is a stage in the design of Printed Circuit Boards, Integrated Circuits, and Field programmable gate arrays. As implied by the name, it is composed of two steps, placement and routing ....
    , PAR: (for digital devices) tool-automated placement
    Placement (EDA)

    Placement is an essential step in electronic design automation - the portion of the physical design flow that assigns exact locations for various circuit...
     of logic-gates and other technology-mapped components of the synthesized gate-netlist, then subsequent routing
    Routing (EDA)

    Routing is a crucial step in the design of integrated circuits. It builds on a preceding step, called Placement , which determines the location of each active element of an IC....
     of the design, which adds wires to connect the components' signal and power terminals.
  • Static timing analysis
    Static timing analysis

    Static Timing Analysis is a method of computing the expected timing of a digital circuit without requiring simulation.High-performance integrated circuits have traditionally been characterized by the clock frequency at which they operate....
    : Analysis of the timing of a circuit in an input-independent manner, hence finding a worst case over all possible inputs.
  • Transistor layout: (for analog/mixed-signal devices), sometimes called polygon pushing – a prepared-schematic is converted into a layout-map showing all layers of the device.
  • Design for Manufacturability
    Design for manufacturability (IC)

    Achieving high-yielding designs in the state of the art, Very-large-scale integration technology has become an extremely challenging task due to the miniaturization as well as the complexity of leading-edge products....
    : tools to help optimize a design to make it as easy and cheap as possible to manufacture.
  • Design closure
    Design closure

    Design closure is the process by which a integrated circuit design is modified from its initial description to meet a growing list of design constraints and objectives....
    : IC design has many constraints, and fixing one problem often makes another worse. Design closure is the process of converging to a design that satisfies all constraints simultaneously.
  • Analysis of substrate coupling
    Substrate coupling

    In an integrated circuit, a signal can couple from one node to another via the substrate. This phenomenon is referred to as substrate coupling or substrate noise coupling....
    .
  • Power network design and analysis
    Power network design (IC)

    In integrated circuits, electrical power is distributed to the components of the chip over a network of conductors on the chip. Power network design includes the analysis and design of such networks....
  • Physical verification
    Physical verification

    Physical verification is a process whereby an Integrated Circuit Layout is checked via EDA software tools to see if it meets certain criteria. Verification involves DRC , LVS , ERC , XOR , and Antenna Checks....
    , PV: checking if a design is physically manufacturable, and that the resulting chips will not have any function-preventing physical defects, and will meet original specifications.
    • Design rule checking
      Design rule checking

      Design Rule Checking or Check is the area of Electronic Design Automation that determines whether a particular chip IC layout satisfies a series of recommended parameters called Design Rules....
      , DRC – checks a number of rules regarding placement and connectivity required for manufacturing.
    • Layout versus schematic
      Layout versus schematic

      The Layout Versus Schematic is the class of electronic design automation verification software that determines whether a particular integrated circuit layout corresponds to the original schematic or circuit diagram of the design....
      , LVS – checks if designed chip layout matches schematics from specification.
    • Layout extraction
      Layout extraction

      The electric circuit extraction or simply circuit extraction, also netlist extraction, is the translation of an integrated circuit layout back into the electrical circuit it is intended...
      , RCX – extracts netlist
      Netlist

      The word netlist can be used in several different contexts, but perhaps the most popular is in the field of electronic design. In this context, a "netlist" describes the connectivity of an electronic design....
      s from layout, including parasitic resistors (PRE), and often capacitors (RCX), and sometimes inductors, inherent in the chip layout.
  • Mask data preparation
    Mask data preparation

    Mask data preparation is the step that translates an intended set of polygons on an integrated circuit layout into a form that can be physically written by the photomask writer....
    , MDP: generation of actual lithography
    Lithography

    Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface. By contrast, in intaglio a plate is engraving, etching or mezzotint to make cavities to contain the printing ink, and in woodblock printing and letterpress ink is applied to the raised surfaces of letters or images....
     photomask
    Photomask

    A photomask is an opaque plate with holes or transparencies that allow light to shine through in a defined pattern. They are commonly used in photolithography....
     used to physically manufacture the chip.
    • Resolution enhancement techniques, RET – methods of increasing of quality of final photomask
      Photomask

      A photomask is an opaque plate with holes or transparencies that allow light to shine through in a defined pattern. They are commonly used in photolithography....
      .
    • Optical proximity correction
      Optical proximity correction

      Optical proximity correction is a photolithography enhancement technique commonly used to compensate for image errors due to diffraction or process effects....
      , OPC – up-front compensation for diffraction
      Diffraction

      Diffraction is normally taken to refer to various phenomena which occur when a wave encounters an obstacle. It is described as the apparent bending of waves around small obstacles and the spreading out of waves past small openings....
       and interference
      Interference

      In physics, interference is the addition of two or more waves that result in a new wave pattern.Interference usually refers to the interaction of waves which are correlated or Coherence with each other, either because they come from the same source or because they have the same or nearly the same frequency....
       effects occurring later when chip is manufactured using this mask.
    • Mask generation – generation of flat mask image from hierarchical design.
  • Manufacturing Test
    • Automatic test pattern generation
      Automatic test pattern generation

      ATPG is an electronic design automation method/technology used to find an input sequence that, when applied to a digital circuit, enables testers to distinguish between the correct circuit behavior and the faulty circuit behavior caused by defects....
      , ATPG – generates pattern-data to systematically exercise as many logic-gates, and other components, as possible.
    • Built-in self-test
      Built-in self-test

      A built-in self-test or built-in test is a mechanism that permits a machine to test itself. Engineers design BISTs to meet requirements such as:...
      , or BIST – installs self-contained test-controllers to automatically test a logic (or memory) structure in the design
    • Design For Test
      Design For Test

      Design for Test is a name for Integrated circuit design techniques that add certain testability features to a integrated circuit hardware product design....
      , DFT – adds logic-structures to a gate-netlist, to facilitate post-fabrication (die/wafer) defect testing.
  • Technology CAD, or TCAD, simulates and analyses the underlying process technology. Semiconductor process simulation
    Semiconductor process simulation

    Semiconductor process simulation is the modeling of the Semiconductor fabrication devices such as transistors. It is a branch of electronic design automation, and part of a sub-field known as technology CAD, or TCAD....
    , the resulting dopant profiles, and electrical properties of devices are derived directly from device physics.
  • Electromagnetic field solver
    Electromagnetic field solver

    Electromagnetic field solvers are specialized programs that solve Maxwell's equations directly. They form a part of the field of electronic design automation, or EDA, and are commonly used in the design of integrated circuits and printed circuit boards....
    s, or just field solver
    Electromagnetic field solver

    Electromagnetic field solvers are specialized programs that solve Maxwell's equations directly. They form a part of the field of electronic design automation, or EDA, and are commonly used in the design of integrated circuits and printed circuit boards....
    s, solve Maxwell's equations directly for cases of interest in IC and PCB design. They are known for being slower but more accurate than the layout extraction
    Layout extraction

    The electric circuit extraction or simply circuit extraction, also netlist extraction, is the translation of an integrated circuit layout back into the electrical circuit it is intended...
     above.


Largest companies and their histories

Well before Electronic Design Automation, the use of computers to help with drafting tasks was well established, and software commercially available. For example, Calma
Calma

Calma Company, based in Sunnyvale, California, was, between 1965 and 1988, a vendor of digitizers and minicomputer-based graphics systems targeted at the cartographic and electronic, mechanical and architectural design markets....
, Applicon
Applicon

Applicon, Incorporated was one of the first vendors of Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing systems. It was founded in 1969 in Bedford, Massachusetts....
, and Computervision
Computervision

Computervision, Inc. was an early pioneer in turnkey Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing company. Computervision was founded in 1969 by Marty Allen and Philippe Villers, and headquartered in Massachusetts, USA....
, established in the late 1960s, sold digitizing and drafting software used for ICs. Zuken
Zuken

is a Japanese multinational corporation, specializing in Engineering Consulting and Electronic design automation. Established in 1976 at Yokohama, Japan, it is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange; market capitalization is estimated as USD300 million as of March 2006....
 Inc. in Japan, established in 1976, sold similar software for PC boards. While these tools were valuable, they did not help with the design portion of the process, which was still done by hand. Design Automation software was developed in the 70s, in academia and within large companies, but it was not until the early 1980s that software to help with the design portion of the process became commercially available.

In 1981, Mentor Graphics
Mentor Graphics

Mentor Graphics, Inc is a United States-based multinational corporation dealing in electronic design automation for electrical engineering and electronics, as of 2004, ranked third in the EDA industry it helped create....
 was founded by managers from Tektronix
Tektronix

Tektronix, Inc. is a United States company best known for its test and measurement equipment such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment....
, Daisy Systems
Daisy Systems

Daisy Systems Corporation incorporated in 1981 in Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California, was a computer-aided engineering company, a pioneer in the Electronic design automation industry....
 was founded largely by developers from Intel, and Valid Logic Systems
Valid Logic Systems

Valid Logic Systems was one of the first commercial EDA electronic design automation companies. It was founded in the early 1980s, along with Daisy Systems Corporation and Mentor Graphics, collectively known as DMV....
 by designers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California is a scientific research laboratory founded by the University of California in 1952....
 and Hewlett Packard. Meanwhile companies such as Calma
Calma

Calma Company, based in Sunnyvale, California, was, between 1965 and 1988, a vendor of digitizers and minicomputer-based graphics systems targeted at the cartographic and electronic, mechanical and architectural design markets....
 and Zuken
Zuken

is a Japanese multinational corporation, specializing in Engineering Consulting and Electronic design automation. Established in 1976 at Yokohama, Japan, it is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange; market capitalization is estimated as USD300 million as of March 2006....
 attempted to expand into the design, as well as the drafting, portion of the market.

When EDA started, analysts categorized these companies as a niche within the “computer aided design” market, primarily mechanical design drafting tools for conceptualizing bridges, buildings and automobiles. In a few years these fields diverged, and today no companies specialize in both mechanical and electrical design automation.

Cadence Design Systems
Cadence Design Systems

Cadence Design Systems, Inc is an electronic design automation software and engineering services company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD, Inc....
 was founded in the mid 1980s, specializing in physical IC design. Synopsys
Synopsys

Synopsys, Inc. is one of the largest companies in the electronic design automation industry. Synopsys' first and best-known product is Design Compiler, a logic-synthesis tool....
 was founded about the same time frame to productize logic synthesis
Logic synthesis

Logic synthesis is a process by which an abstract form of desired circuit behavior is turned into a design implementation in terms of logic gates....
. Both have grown to be the largest full-line suppliers of EDA tools. Magma Design Automation
Magma Design Automation

Magma Design Automation is a software company in the electronic design automation industry. The company was founded in 1997 and maintains headquarters in San Jose, California, California....
  was founded in 1997 to take advantage of the simplifications possible by building an IC design system from scratch.

Company Location Market Value (March 2009) Logo
Synopsys
Synopsys

Synopsys, Inc. is one of the largest companies in the electronic design automation industry. Synopsys' first and best-known product is Design Compiler, a logic-synthesis tool....
 		 Mountain View, California
California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
 		 $2550 million
Cadence Design Systems
Cadence Design Systems

Cadence Design Systems, Inc is an electronic design automation software and engineering services company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD, Inc....
 		 San Jose
San Jose, California

San Jose or San Jos? is the List of cities in California city in California and the List of United States cities by population in the United States....
, California
California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
 		 $990 million
Mentor Graphics
Mentor Graphics

Mentor Graphics, Inc is a United States-based multinational corporation dealing in electronic design automation for electrical engineering and electronics, as of 2004, ranked third in the EDA industry it helped create....
 		 Wilsonville
Wilsonville, Oregon

Wilsonville is a city primarily in Clackamas County, Oregon, Oregon, United States. A portion of the northern section of the city is in Washington County, Oregon....
, Oregon
Oregon

Oregon is a U.S. state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. The area was inhabited by many indigenous tribes before the arrival of traders, explorers and settlers....
 		 $410 million
Zuken
Zuken

is a Japanese multinational corporation, specializing in Engineering Consulting and Electronic design automation. Established in 1976 at Yokohama, Japan, it is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange; market capitalization is estimated as USD300 million as of March 2006....
 Inc. 		Yokohama
Yokohama

is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kanto region of the main island of Honshu. It is a major commercial hub of the Greater Tokyo Area....
, Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
 		 $149 million
Magma Design Automation
Magma Design Automation

Magma Design Automation is a software company in the electronic design automation industry. The company was founded in 1997 and maintains headquarters in San Jose, California, California....
 		 San Jose
San Jose, California

San Jose or San Jos? is the List of cities in California city in California and the List of United States cities by population in the United States....
, California
California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
 		 $42 million  


One of the top five EDA businesses by revenue is the EEsof
EEsof

EEsof was founded in 1983 by an entrepreneur, Charles Abronson, and a former Compact Software employee, William Childs . Its Electronic design automation products included high frequency circuit simulators such as Touchstone and Libra....
 EDA division of Agilent. EEsof (founded 1983) is part of the much larger Agilent ($11 billion market value October 2008).

See also

EDA Companies EDA Software
  • Comparison of Free EDA software
    Comparison of Free EDA software

    Also worth mentioning is SPICE, a general purpose analog circuit Electronic circuit simulation.Open source software Electronic design automation enables End-user s with programming skills to add features and fix Software bug....
  • Design flow (EDA)
    Design flow (EDA)

    Design flows are the explicit combination of electronic design automation tools to accomplish the design of an integrated circuit. Moore's law has driven the entire IC implementation Register transfer level to GDSII design flows from one which uses primarily...
    , design flows are the explicit combination of electronic design automation tools to accomplish the design of an integrated circuit
  • EDA database
    EDA database

    An EDA database is a database specialized for the purpose of electronic design automation. These application specific databases are required because general purpose databases have historically not provided enough performance for EDA applications....
    , is a database specialized for the purpose of electronic design automation
  • List of EDA companies
    List of EDA companies

    A comprehensive list of electronic design automation Companies can be compiled from lists of vendors-exhibitors of Design Automation Conference held annually for more than 30 years....
  • Placement (EDA)
    Placement (EDA)

    Placement is an essential step in electronic design automation - the portion of the physical design flow that assigns exact locations for various circuit...
    , placement is an essential step in electronic design automation
  • Power optimization (EDA)
    Power optimization (EDA)

    Power optimization refers to the use of electronic design automation tools to optimize the power consumption of a digital design, while preserving the functionality....
    , power optimization refers to the use of electronic design automation tools to optimize (reduce) the power consumption of a digital design, while preserving the functionality
  • Routing (EDA)
    Routing (EDA)

    Routing is a crucial step in the design of integrated circuits. It builds on a preceding step, called Placement , which determines the location of each active element of an IC....
    , routing is a crucial step in the design of integrated circuits
  • Post silicon validation
    Post silicon validation

    Post-silicon validation and debug is the last step in the development of a semiconductor integrated circuit. During the pre-silicon process, engineers test devices in a virtual environment with sophisticated simulation, emulation, and formal verification tools....
    , the final step in the EDA design flow
  • ASIC
    ASIC

    The acronym ASIC, depending on context, may stand for:* Application-specific integrated circuit, an integrated circuit customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use...
  • Circuit Design
    Circuit design

    The process of circuit design can cover systems ranging from complex electronic systems all the way down to the individual transistors within an integrated circuit....
  • Fabrication (semiconductor)
  • GDSII
    GDSII

    GDS II stream format, common acronym GDSII, is a database file format which is the de facto industry standard for data exchange of integrated circuit or IC layout artwork....
  • IBIS
    Input Output Buffer Information Specification

    IBIS is a method of providing information about the input/output buffers of an integrated circuit to the outside world. It is an EIA standard.The idea of IBIS is to provide the behavioral aspects of a circuit without providing the actual circuit information to the user....
  • List of CAD companies
    List of CAD companies

    List of CAx companies and their software products.Software using computer-aided technologies has been produced since the 1970s through to the present for a variety of computer platforms....
  • OASIS
  • SPICE
    Spice

    A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, leaf, or vegetable used in nutritionally insignificant quantities as a food additive for the purpose of flavor, color, or as a preservative that kills harmful bacteria or prevents their growth....
  • VLSI
  • Fritzing
    Fritzing

    File:fritzing schematic view.jpgFritzing is an open-source initiative to support designers and artists to take the step from physical prototyping to actual product....


Further reading/External links

  • Design and Design Automation Symposium Leading Design for Quality and Manufacturing
  • Non-Profit standards organization
  • EDA Portal and Community Hub
  • Chip design & EDA news portal (as February of 2009 the site is down)
  • The Design Automation Conference
  • News and Events about the Electronic Design Automation industry
  • from hkstp.org


Open source EDA tools

  • The gEDA
    GEDA

    The term gEDA refers to two things:# A set of software applications used for electronic design released under the GPL. As such, gEDA is an ECAD or EDA application suite....
     project is a community of open-source developers who have collaboratively produced an end-to-end EDA tool suite called the "gEDA Suite". This toolset includes programs for schematic capture, analog and digital simulation, PCB layout, Gerber viewing, attribute and BOM management, and other design tasks. The tools are release under the GPL.
  • A popular open-source IC design tool
  • A historic set of tools.
  • Diglog Chipmunk suite application 'Diglog' that simulate digital logics. Features real-time view & edit.
  • The Electric VLSI Design System
    Electric (software)

    The Electric Very-large-scale integration Design System is an Electronic design automation tool written by Steven M. Rubin.Electric is used to draw schematics and to do integrated circuit layout....
     a complete system for integrated-circuit design.
  • OpenCores
    OpenCores

    OpenCores is a loose community of people who are interested in developing digital open source hardware through electronic design automation, with a similar ethos to the free software movement....
     Predesigned, LGPLed intellectual property blocks for ICs. Their collects several hundred tools.
  • Complete set of RTL to layout EDA tools
  • Kicad
    Kicad

    KiCad is an open source software suite for Electronic design automation - designing schematics of electronic circuits and printed circuit boards ....
     is an open source (GPL) software for the creation of electronic schematic diagrams and printed circuit board artwork.
  • Qucs
    Quite Universal Circuit Simulator

    Quite Universal Circuit Simulator is a open source electronics circuit simulator software released under GPL.It gives you the possibility to set up a circuit with a graphical user interface and simulate the large-signal, small-signal and noise behaviour of the circuit....
     is an open source (GPL) software based on Qt
    Qt (toolkit)

    Qt is a cross-platform application development framework, widely used for the development of graphical user interface programs , and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as console tools and servers....
     for the creation and simulation (large-signal, small-signal, S-parameters
    Scattering parameters

    Scattering parameters or S-parameters are properties used in electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and communications system engineering describing the electrical behavior of linear electrical networks when undergoing various steady state input by small signals....
    , noise behaviour and digital) of electrical and RF
    Radio electronics

    *For the magazine, see Radio-ElectronicsRadio electronics is the sub-field of electrical engineering concerning itself with the class of electronics electrical network which receive or transmit radio signals....
     circuits.
  • For open source versions of logic design languages, see the languages, i.e. See VHDL, Verilog
    Verilog

    In the semiconductor and electronic design industry, Verilog is a hardware description language used to model Electronics#Electronic systems. Verilog HDL, not to be confused with VHDL, is most commonly used in the design, verification, and implementation of Digital circuit logic chips at the Register transfer level level of Abstraction...
  • (free Eclipse-based hardware design and simulation environment)
  • Packet visualization tool to graph and debug cache coherency simulations and other hardware/software systems.
  • Publicad Free educational digital design package.
  • FreePCB
    FreePCB

    FreePCB is a printed circuit board design program for Microsoft Windows. It allows for up to 16 copper layers, both metric system and United States customary units units, and export of designs in Gerber File format....
     A printed circuit board design program for Microsoft Windows.
  • is an open source (GPL), user-friendly EDA targeted toward artists, designers, hobbyists and students.