Exportability of EDA industry from North America?

[EDA wannabe]

Some colleagues and I were discussing the situation with the high tech
industry, with jobs moving out of North America. This has hit circuit
designers hard, especially those in digital. Can EDA tool development
be expected to follow suit, is has it already happened? If not, what
are the factors that differentiate it from design work to make it less
exportable? Comments are also welcome for automatation of methodologies
for programmable system-on-chip e.g. reconfigurable processor arrays.

 

[Paul Burke]

EDA wannabe wrote:

Can EDA tool development
be expected to follow suit, is has it already happened?

EdWin, the nightmarish Swedish PCB CAD system, has been "developed" in
India for several years now.

Paul Burke

 

[Phil Tomson]

In article <41C0FFE5.6BDE4AFF@Email.Address.com>,
EDA wannabe <No@Email.Address.com> wrote:

Some colleagues and I were discussing the situation with the high tech
industry, with jobs moving out of North America. This has hit circuit
designers hard, especially those in digital. Can EDA tool development
be expected to follow suit, is has it already happened?

It's already happening to a large degree. Most of the big EDA companies
have India/China SW R&D offices.

If not, what
are the factors that differentiate it from design work to make it less
exportable?

It's just as easy to export EDA development jobs as it is to export
circuit design. Might be easier since software developers are readily
available.

Probably the best bet if you want an EDA job in the US is to get a PhD,
but even some of the highlevel research is starting to move over.


It's not a pretty picture. The standard of living will likely have to
fall a good bit in the US before you see these kinds of jobs move back.

Phil

 

[Phil Tomson]

In article <aqUz8KBGOYwBFw$7@jmwa.demon.co.uk>,
John Woodgate <noone@yuk.yuk> wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that Phil Tomson <ptkwt@aracnet.com
wrote (in <cprnfc02h25@enews3.newsguy.com&gt about 'Exportability of EDA
industry from North America?', on Thu, 16 Dec 2004:

It's not a pretty picture. The standard of living will likely have to
fall a good bit in the US before you see these kinds of jobs move back.

Or the standard of living elsewhere will have to rise.

True. We'll have to meet in the middle somewhere. This is partly why the
dollar is falling (also because of the national debt, of course). The
fact remains that the US standard of living will have to fall in this kind
of a free-trade system. It's not going to be pretty for the US standard
of living to fall that way - it hasn't really happened before.

Phil

 

[Phil Tomson]

In article <41C20022.7338460C@Email.Address.com>,
EDA wannabe <No@Email.Address.com> wrote:

Aside from the doom and gloom of predicting the potential decline of an
industry and area of R&D, I wonder about the likely challenges in transferring
the associated experience into other areas. Combinatoric problems are a
very general label, and I'm sure there is much crucial, domain-specific
knowledge
to make such a skill set valuable.

I am beginning to think along these lines as well. Areas like datamining
or bioinformatics will likely dwarf EDA in terms of revenue (and thus
more jobs will be available in those areas). It might be
better to think of Google instead of [Synopsys|Mentor|Cadence|etc] as a
potential employer. I also am a grad student (with a lot of years of
'real-world' experience) and whereas I was aiming toward EDA in my
studies, now I'm starting to think about branching out into a different
area that might be growing faster... but I'm still very interested in EDA.

Phil

 

[Richard Griffith]

EDA wannabe wrote:

Some colleagues and I were discussing the situation with the high tech
industry, with jobs moving out of North America. This has hit circuit
designers hard, especially those in digital. Can EDA tool development
be expected to follow suit, is has it already happened? If not, what
are the factors that differentiate it from design work to make it less
exportable? Comments are also welcome for automatation of methodologies
for programmable system-on-chip e.g. reconfigurable processor arrays.

I would say it is time for the EDA industry to flip to open source code.
All the fabless startups are just killed by the tool expenditures they
need to make.

1. OpenSource simulator:
analog -> spice
digital->?
mixed->?
2. Schematic capture
3. Netlister/code capture. I don't think even the professional EDA tools
have this right. Why does multiplier.sch or multipler.c have only 1
view. Why not version control/views built into the editor where the
netlister can be set to grab different versions or the editor highlight
the delta's. A configuration view that sees all views from system level
to extracted with all their associated versions and tags.
4. Layout editor/GDS viewer. How many polygons does a video game push?
5. Schematic/Layout/System viewers that allow properties to attach.
Wires colored by current, sized by voltage. Visualization tools.

I think the industry needs open source tools.

 

[Richard Griffith]

EDA wannabe wrote:

Some colleagues and I were discussing the situation with the high tech
industry, with jobs moving out of North America. This has hit circuit
designers hard, especially those in digital. Can EDA tool development
be expected to follow suit, is has it already happened? If not, what
are the factors that differentiate it from design work to make it less
exportable? Comments are also welcome for automatation of methodologies
for programmable system-on-chip e.g. reconfigurable processor arrays.

I would say it is time for the EDA industry to flip to open source code.
All the fabless startups are just killed by the tool expenditures they
need to make.

1. OpenSource simulator:
analog -> spice
digital->?
mixed->?
2. Schematic capture
3. Netlister/code capture. I don't think even the professional EDA tools
have this right. Why does multiplier.sch or multipler.c have only 1
view. Why not version control/views built into the editor where the
netlister can be set to grab different versions or the editor highlight
the delta's. A configuration view that sees all views from system level
to extracted with all their associated versions and tags.
4. Layout editor/GDS viewer. How many polygons does a video game push?
5. Schematic/Layout/System viewers that allow properties to attach.
Wires colored by current, sized by voltage. Visualization tools.

I think the industry needs open source tools.

 

[Richard Griffith]

EDA wannabe wrote:

Some colleagues and I were discussing the situation with the high tech
industry, with jobs moving out of North America. This has hit circuit
designers hard, especially those in digital. Can EDA tool development
be expected to follow suit, is has it already happened? If not, what
are the factors that differentiate it from design work to make it less
exportable? Comments are also welcome for automatation of methodologies
for programmable system-on-chip e.g. reconfigurable processor arrays.

I would say it is time for the EDA industry to flip to open source code.
All the fabless startups are just killed by the tool expenditures they
need to make.

1. OpenSource simulator:
analog -> spice
digital->?
mixed->?
2. Schematic capture
3. Netlister/code capture. I don't think even the professional EDA tools
have this right. Why does multiplier.sch or multipler.c have only 1
view. Why not version control/views built into the editor where the
netlister can be set to grab different versions or the editor highlight
the delta's. A configuration view that sees all views from system level
to extracted with all their associated versions and tags.
4. Layout editor/GDS viewer. How many polygons does a video game push?
5. Schematic/Layout/System viewers that allow properties to attach.
Wires colored by current, sized by voltage. Visualization tools.

I think the industry needs open source tools.

 

[Richard Griffith]

EDA wannabe wrote:

Some colleagues and I were discussing the situation with the high tech
industry, with jobs moving out of North America. This has hit circuit
designers hard, especially those in digital. Can EDA tool development
be expected to follow suit, is has it already happened? If not, what
are the factors that differentiate it from design work to make it less
exportable? Comments are also welcome for automatation of methodologies
for programmable system-on-chip e.g. reconfigurable processor arrays.

I would say it is time for the EDA industry to flip to open source code.
All the fabless startups are just killed by the tool expenditures they
need to make.

1. OpenSource simulator:
analog -> spice
digital->?
mixed->?
2. Schematic capture
3. Netlister/code capture. I don't think even the professional EDA tools
have this right. Why does multiplier.sch or multipler.c have only 1
view. Why not version control/views built into the editor where the
netlister can be set to grab different versions or the editor highlight
the delta's. A configuration view that sees all views from system level
to extracted with all their associated versions and tags.
4. Layout editor/GDS viewer. How many polygons does a video game push?
5. Schematic/Layout/System viewers that allow properties to attach.
Wires colored by current, sized by voltage. Visualization tools.

I think the industry needs open source tools.

 

[Richard Griffith]

EDA wannabe wrote:

Some colleagues and I were discussing the situation with the high tech
industry, with jobs moving out of North America. This has hit circuit
designers hard, especially those in digital. Can EDA tool development
be expected to follow suit, is has it already happened? If not, what
are the factors that differentiate it from design work to make it less
exportable? Comments are also welcome for automatation of methodologies
for programmable system-on-chip e.g. reconfigurable processor arrays.

I would say it is time for the EDA industry to flip to open source code.
All the fabless startups are just killed by the tool expenditures they
need to make.

1. OpenSource simulator:
analog -> spice
digital->?
mixed->?
2. Schematic capture
3. Netlister/code capture. I don't think even the professional EDA tools
have this right. Why does multiplier.sch or multipler.c have only 1
view. Why not version control/views built into the editor where the
netlister can be set to grab different versions or the editor highlight
the delta's. A configuration view that sees all views from system level
to extracted with all their associated versions and tags.
4. Layout editor/GDS viewer. How many polygons does a video game push?
5. Schematic/Layout/System viewers that allow properties to attach.
Wires colored by current, sized by voltage. Visualization tools.

I think the industry needs open source tools.

 

[Richard Griffith]

EDA wannabe wrote:

Some colleagues and I were discussing the situation with the high tech
industry, with jobs moving out of North America. This has hit circuit
designers hard, especially those in digital. Can EDA tool development
be expected to follow suit, is has it already happened? If not, what
are the factors that differentiate it from design work to make it less
exportable? Comments are also welcome for automatation of methodologies
for programmable system-on-chip e.g. reconfigurable processor arrays.

I would say it is time for the EDA industry to flip to open source code.
All the fabless startups are just killed by the tool expenditures they
need to make.

1. OpenSource simulator:
analog -> spice
digital->?
mixed->?
2. Schematic capture
3. Netlister/code capture. I don't think even the professional EDA tools
have this right. Why does multiplier.sch or multipler.c have only 1
view. Why not version control/views built into the editor where the
netlister can be set to grab different versions or the editor highlight
the delta's. A configuration view that sees all views from system level
to extracted with all their associated versions and tags.
4. Layout editor/GDS viewer. How many polygons does a video game push?
5. Schematic/Layout/System viewers that allow properties to attach.
Wires colored by current, sized by voltage. Visualization tools.

I think the industry needs open source tools.

 

[Richard Griffith]

EDA wannabe wrote:

Some colleagues and I were discussing the situation with the high tech
industry, with jobs moving out of North America. This has hit circuit
designers hard, especially those in digital. Can EDA tool development
be expected to follow suit, is has it already happened? If not, what
are the factors that differentiate it from design work to make it less
exportable? Comments are also welcome for automatation of methodologies
for programmable system-on-chip e.g. reconfigurable processor arrays.

I would say it is time for the EDA industry to flip to open source code.
All the fabless startups are just killed by the tool expenditures they
need to make.

1. OpenSource simulator:
analog -> spice
digital->?
mixed->?
2. Schematic capture
3. Netlister/code capture. I don't think even the professional EDA tools
have this right. Why does multiplier.sch or multipler.c have only 1
view. Why not version control/views built into the editor where the
netlister can be set to grab different versions or the editor highlight
the delta's. A configuration view that sees all views from system level
to extracted with all their associated versions and tags.
4. Layout editor/GDS viewer. How many polygons does a video game push?
5. Schematic/Layout/System viewers that allow properties to attach.
Wires colored by current, sized by voltage. Visualization tools.

I think the industry needs open source tools.

 

[Richard Griffith]

EDA wannabe wrote:

Some colleagues and I were discussing the situation with the high tech
industry, with jobs moving out of North America. This has hit circuit
designers hard, especially those in digital. Can EDA tool development
be expected to follow suit, is has it already happened? If not, what
are the factors that differentiate it from design work to make it less
exportable? Comments are also welcome for automatation of methodologies
for programmable system-on-chip e.g. reconfigurable processor arrays.

I would say it is time for the EDA industry to flip to open source code.
All the fabless startups are just killed by the tool expenditures they
need to make.

1. OpenSource simulator:
analog -> spice
digital->?
mixed->?
2. Schematic capture
3. Netlister/code capture. I don't think even the professional EDA tools
have this right. Why does multiplier.sch or multipler.c have only 1
view. Why not version control/views built into the editor where the
netlister can be set to grab different versions or the editor highlight
the delta's. A configuration view that sees all views from system level
to extracted with all their associated versions and tags.
4. Layout editor/GDS viewer. How many polygons does a video game push?
5. Schematic/Layout/System viewers that allow properties to attach.
Wires colored by current, sized by voltage. Visualization tools.

I think the industry needs open source tools.

 

[Winston Smith]

ptkwt@aracnet.com (Phil Tomson) wrote in
news:cpsaav02be3@enews1.newsguy.com:

In article <aqUz8KBGOYwBFw$7@jmwa.demon.co.uk>,
John Woodgate <noone@yuk.yuk> wrote:
I read in sci.electronics.design that Phil Tomson <ptkwt@aracnet.com
wrote (in <cprnfc02h25@enews3.newsguy.com&gt about 'Exportability of
EDA industry from North America?', on Thu, 16 Dec 2004:

It's not a pretty picture. The standard of living will likely have
to fall a good bit in the US before you see these kinds of jobs move
back.

Or the standard of living elsewhere will have to rise.

True. We'll have to meet in the middle somewhere. This is partly why
the dollar is falling (also because of the national debt, of course).
The fact remains that the US standard of living will have to fall in
this kind of a free-trade system. It's not going to be pretty for the
US standard of living to fall that way - it hasn't really happened
before.

Phil

Meeting in the middle will be very hard for Americans, especially when
the middle will be population-weighted billions of Indians and Chinese
200 plus million of us in the USA. Already those high paid Malysians
and others in Asia have been squeezed by the even lower cost Chinese.
The middle probably represents a per capita income of $5,000.

Once all the technology and industry that are the basis of the USA's
strength are transported to Asia, we'll see how our position in the
world changes. Once all the technical people are over there, they will
be the onese in the drivers seat. And they will not need American CEOS
for long. No it won't be pretty.

Since China has its currency tied to the dollar, there has been no self
correcting economic feeback loop to stem the trade deficit with them.
Otherwise our currency would have fallen against theirs and the price of
their products would have gone up. Instead we are in a death spiral
with an elephant.

Not that all is rosy for the Chinese or the CEOs sending all the work
there. All the Chinese banks are insolvant, there is no financial
transparency, corruption is rampant, contracts may not be enforcable,
intellectual property is stolen outright, its difficult to take money
out of the country, the political situation can change at any moment, a
billion peasants are poor and restless and then there is Tiawan.

With those negatives you have to wonder what these CEOs are thinking by
placing their balls firmly in the grasp of the Chinese.

 

[Gary J. Tait]

On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 14:23:50 GMT, Robert Baer
<robertbaer@earthlink.net> wrote:

France??

No Canada, where ATI and Matrox hail from.

 

[Robert Baer]

"Gary J. Tait" wrote:

On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 14:23:50 GMT, Robert Baer
robertbaer@earthlink.net> wrote:


France??

No Canada, where ATI and Matrox hail from.

I understood that.
However, when one hears French over the phone on such a call, it is
possible that the help desk could also be in France...or in parts of
Africa (theoretically).

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 11:22:54 GMT, the renowned Robert Baer
<robertbaer@earthlink.net> wrote:

"Gary J. Tait" wrote:

On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 14:23:50 GMT, Robert Baer
robertbaer@earthlink.net> wrote:


France??

No Canada, where ATI and Matrox hail from.

I understood that.
However, when one hears French over the phone on such a call, it is
possible that the help desk could also be in France...or in parts of
Africa (theoretically).

If you're getting lousy service, perhaps it's in Vientiane.

 

[Tobias Weingartner]

In article <4205FE3C.AE4D86E2@earthlink.net>, Robert Baer wrote:

"Gary J. Tait" wrote:

On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 14:23:50 GMT, Robert Baer
robertbaer@earthlink.net> wrote:


France??

No Canada, where ATI and Matrox hail from.

I understood that.
However, when one hears French over the phone on such a call, it is
possible that the help desk could also be in France...or in parts of
Africa (theoretically).

And no US citizens speak french, and happen to work at a call centre
in the states? In today's world, it helps not to have any notions about
where you are getting service from. Wheater state, or country, or even
company.

--
[100~Plax]sb16i0A2172656B63616820636420726568746F6E61207473754A[dZ1!=b]salax

 

[JJ]

EDA wannabe wrote:

Some colleagues and I were discussing the situation with the high
tech
industry, with jobs moving out of North America. This has hit
circuit
designers hard, especially those in digital. Can EDA tool
development
be expected to follow suit, is has it already happened? If not, what
are the factors that differentiate it from design work to make it
less
exportable? Comments are also welcome for automatation of
methodologies
for programmable system-on-chip e.g. reconfigurable processor arrays.

Sorry bud but its already gone offshore big time, Romania, Russia,
India all have EDA sites now, read EET to see who is doing the
shipping. I long lost interest in EDA except to create own stuff. The
EDA biz was always less profitable than the customer base so its no
surprise.

regards

johnjakson_usa_com

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Phil Tomson <ptkwt@aracnet.com>
wrote (in <cprnfc02h25@enews3.newsguy.com&gt about 'Exportability of EDA
industry from North America?', on Thu, 16 Dec 2004:

It's not a pretty picture. The standard of living will likely have to
fall a good bit in the US before you see these kinds of jobs move back.

Or the standard of living elsewhere will have to rise.

The removal of WTO quotas for clothing exports from developing countries
is said to spell trouble for ... - no, Bangladesh! Apparently India and
China can undercut the Bangla manufacturers.
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk