Rick Lucier, President and Chief Executive Officer, Carbon Design Systems

As 2009 came to a close, we have begun to see a revival in design starts, which bodes well for EDA. Over past 18 months, EDA, much like the rest of the world, has had it challenges with pressure on both the top- and bottom-line. The main factor creating the challenge has been a severe retrenchment of design starts.

Moving into 2010, I remain cautiously optimistic about our market, but expect to see some companies do well while others continue to struggle, which will result in the aggregate market remaining relatively flat.

Driving this scenario are several fundamental changes that will become more evident as the worldwide electronics market recovers. This change can be simply described as an exodus from traditional ASICs to SoCs. These SoCs are coming from fewer and fewer sources and project teams are being forced to differentiate them to an increasing degree with the software they put on top of these chips.

This change has two major implications -- less demand for traditional tools and more focus on tools that bridge the gap between hardware and software teams. Companies focusing on this shift will fare better than those primarily viewing EDA by its historical definitions and market categories.

At Carbon, we provide solutions that address the needs of project teams making this transition. A barometer that we track is companies adopting new IP technology to develop SoCs. Over the past three or so months, we have seen an increase in the use of processors cores across the entire design space, from microcontrollers to the most advanced applications processors.
This trend has started to drive the demand for models and tools supporting the needs of hardware and software groups alike.

Further, most investments being made are not in traditional tool categories -- companies have an ample supply already on hand. Recent purchases are targeted specifically for methodologies supporting new technologies with an upgrade path that is evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

We have found that companies are augmenting their design flow with virtual system prototyping tools for architectural analysis and pre-silicon hardware/software validation. Virtual prototypes can play an important role in the architectural phase as multi-core processors and complex fabrics become more prevalent. They also serve as a platform for early firmware validation. A critical component to ensure adoption of these virtual systems is the support of standards, the availability of models and the fidelity of models at different levels of abstractions.

Companies such as Carbon and other IP and EDA players are spearheading the TLM 2.0 and cycle-accurate (or pin level) extensions, making the use for virtual system prototypes a reality. This will give project teams the ability to seamlessly and dynamically transition from 100% cycle-accurate models to a programmer’s view model within the same simulation session.

The complexity of newer multicore designs will force virtual system prototype into the mainstream, while hardware prototyping becomes more difficult to debug and costlier to build. The advantage of a pure software solution allows project teams to outfit their complete ecosystem with early access to the design, from internal firmware developers to external software developers.

2010 may be the year of virtual system prototyping. The combination of new design complexities, standards, ease of generating 100% cycle-accurate models and a plug and play model strategy will drive the adoption of virtual system prototype. All that along with a little help from the macroeconomic gods.