State of the global EDA industry: Dr. Pradip Dutta, Synopsys

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to be able to speak with Dr. Pradip Dutta Corporate Vice President and Managing Director, and Treasurer, regarding the state of the global EDA industry and in India. What followed was a very interesting conversation, some of which is reproduced here!

Any sign of improvements in EDA?
To start with, the state of the global EDA industry is well known, and it has also seen revenue drops Q-on-Q in the past. Are there any signs of improvement?

According to Dr. Dutta, the last several quarters in the semiconductor industry have been extremely challenging as consumer demand for electronic products has declined with the heavy stress on the global economy.

“While we are starting to see signs of the semiconductor industry rebounding off the bottom with inventory replenishment and an uptick in end demand for key consumer items such as PCs and mobile phones, the environment is expected to remain difficult at least well into next year.

“During this time, the challenge for the semiconductor industry and its suppliers will be to find the next level of efficiency. The good news is that across a broad field of applications, semiconductors are a key enabler to future prosperity. Green solutions, low-cost netbooks, advances in connectivity and evolving products like the Kindle are just a few examples of areas that could help drive future development.

“The long-term ramifications of this scenario on the EDA industry are starting to become visible. More than ever, customers want to get their products out on time, and get it right with high quality.

“In addition to some immediate cost-cutting to respond to the crisis, most semiconductor and design businesses are re-focusing their market strategies, streamlining their operations, de-risking their supplier and partner relationships, and in some cases actively pursuing consolidation opportunities to drive economic efficiency.

“This situation presents as an opportunity for EDA companies to focus on important product developments that can enable leading semiconductor design and manufacturing companies to not only create more advanced devices, but to simultaneously lower risks and cut costs. In today’s economy, companies need to find ways to manage expenses while still investing in the future so they don’t just survive the recession, they emerge from it stronger.”

State of the Indian EDA industry
Obviously, it would be interesting to see how is the Indian EDA industry holding up in these times.

Dr. Dutta said that the Indian EDA industry is a combination of catering to global semiconductor players and addressing the needs of a domestic market that is slowly developing. The global players that operate out of India are rapidly moving up the value chain in terms of owning and architecting the next generation chips. This leads to an enormous opportunity for EDA companies to get associated at the front end of tool decisions.

“As you are aware, the level of technology that is being witnessed in the chips that are getting designed here is absolutely bleeding edge. The EDA companies are therefore paying concomitant attention to robust application support and in-house R&D effort. It has to be a full package here and now to address these kinds of customer requirements.

“Beyond the global players, India is seeing a few, but committed fabless design companies coming up in recent times. In addition to that, the Indian government is showing a lot of interest in country-specific programs, primarily in defense areas that require EDA support.

“We have also recently seen media reports about an “India Chip” being conceived at the central government level for domestic security applications. The ISA is working toward a blueprint for targeting semiconductors into a national agenda and hopefully, many ideas for systems and corresponding chips that will emanate from it to keep EDA companies interested,” he added.

Elections 2009! India's IT, semicon, telecom sectors welcome UPA's victory!

The results of India’s 15th General Elections are nearly all out! The people’s verdict — voting Dr. Manmohan Singh and Indian National Congress (INC) led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to a second successive term!

Undoubtedly, this is a vote for stability, continuity and good governance. It is hoped, the nation will have good governance that can be devoid of external pressures of coalition partners. In some ways, the verdict is a vote in favour of the economic policies of the Indian government leading to continued liberalization as well.

This ‘pleasantly surprising’ result of India’s latest general elections has been welcomed overwhelmingly by leaders in India’s IT/ITeS, telecom and semiconductor industries.

Dr. Ganesh Natarajan, vice chairman and CEO, Zensar Technologies and former chairman, NASSCOM, says: “We welcome the results of the election, which are indicative of a stable government at the Centre. In the current global economic environment, it is important that India has a stable and progressive political environment that can focus on long-term policies for the sustainable development of the country, even as it takes decisive steps to immediately put the economy back on a high-growth trajectory.

“The Indian IT-BPO sector is both an engine and a catalyst for the development of the Indian economy and we are confident that the government will continue to partner with this sector for leveraging the benefits of IT for India’s domestic economy and through international trade. We also look forward to working with the government to promote inclusive growth and social benefits through the innovative use of IT. It is noteworthy that the biggest electoral process in the world — the globally-admired Indian elections — is through the use of EVMs, itself symbolic of the significance of IT for the country.”

According to Dr. Pradip Dutta, corporate VP and managing director, Synopsys (India) Pvt Ltd: “There is an element of decisiveness in the election results this time, which bodes well for the industry. An anxiety around a fractured and short-lived coalition has been replaced by a confidence that the new mandate will provide a government capable of delivering sustainable long term benefits for both economy and business.”

Jaswinder. S. Ahuja, corporate vice president and managing director, Cadence Design Systems (I) Pvt. Ltd, and former chairman, India Semiconductor Association (ISA), adds: “I am encouraged by the result. It is pro-progress. Also, the fact that Congress has a clear mandate should ensure that they can do the right things and make the bold moves that are needed at this time in order to ensure that India can claim its rightful place on the global stage, unencumbered by the compulsions of a fractured coalition.”

N.K. Goyal, president, Communications and Manufacturing Association of India (CMAI), chairman Emeritus, TEMA, chairman, CTIA, and vice chairman, ITU APT India, notes: “The country has given a clear message that it wants development and growth, and has rejected the approach of divide, religion, caste, etc. The long awaited liberalization agenda will get a boost now. The industry is sure that there would be stimulus in economy, growth in manufacturing and sustained policies for economic uplift.

“Infrastructure development will also get encouragement. India’s GDP growth will surpass 10 percent within the next three years. The telecom sector will see deeper penetration in rural areas, and broadband will match voice subscribers. We can expect 500 millions Internet connections by 2012.”

S. Uma Mahesh, co-founder CEO of Indrion Technologies, points out that UPA’s win is attributable to the following reasons:
* Rural support — unemplyment program (though it had more party orientation), and loan waiver (though it didn’t quite address all loaned people);
* Defocussed campaigning by other parties;
* Local factors (like ‘poor campaigning’, divided votes in AP);
* A ‘seasoned-company’ like approach by Congress that has to be commended, and the media support (similar for Democrats in US);

He adds: “Now the UPA has a chance of a lifetime — with no excuses. They should be able to do ‘real reforms’, and provide ‘real governance’ over the next four years at least, before getting into elections mode again. This should include — insurance reforms, labour laws, legal reforms, more liberal FDI, media reforms, and not to forget the rural sector, as well as the infrastructure.”

Quite correct! I am very sure that the new UPA government, which should be sworn in quite soon, will take all of the necessary steps to boost India’s IT/ITeS, telecom, semiconductor and solar photovoltaic sectors. There are several solar photovoltaic and semiconductor fab proposals that, I believe, need clearance as well.

Bundeep Singh Rangar, chairman, IndusView Advisors Ltd, the India-focused cross-border advisory firm, said in a statement today: “The government will have its task cut out with more than $700 billion worth of investments to be channeled in to India’s infrastructure, power, telecom and pharma sectors over the next five years to provide the country a strong foundation to achieve the aspirational growth of 10 percent.”

I would really like to see industry folks set their expectations before the new government at the center. If I can play a small role in carrying their messages, it would indeed be an honour!

Synopsys on Discovery 2009, VCS2009 and CustomSIM

If you’ve been following the EDA industry closely, you’d be well aware of three major announcements by Synopsys over the last couple of days. These are:

* Synopsys introduced the Discovery 2009 verification platform, delivering faster, unified verification solutions.
* It unveiled the VCS multicore technology, delivering 2x verification speed-up.
* It introduced the CustomSim Unified Circuit Simulation solution, which addresses custom digital, analog and memory verification challenges.

I met up with Dr. Pradip K. Dutta, Corporate Vice President & Managing Director, Synopsys (India) Pvt Ltd and Manoj Gandhi, vice president and general manager, verification group @ Synopsys, in an attempt to understand how significant these announcements are for verification.

Verification is huge!
According to Manoj Gandhi, at the macro level, design complexities continue to grow. As this grows, one big challenge is verification. The reason is: today’s SoC designs and large IC designs, they are being approached like large software projects.

He said: “Verification becomes huge, like software. It is expensive in hardware design. We focus on the verification challenges. We introduced the System Verilog about four to five years ago, and we had also acquired ArchPro. Yesterday, we announced the Discovery 2009, CustomSim and VCS2009.”

How can users make use of new CPUs coming out? “We aim to get higher much performance using multicore architecture,” he added.

Introducing VCS2009
The VCS2009 is multicore enabled, runs the industry’s first low-power verification methodology, and enables fastest mixed-signal simulation with the CustomSIM. Focusing on the VCS2009, Gandhi said: “In verification, there’s a design under test and verification. A lot of designs now have multicores. AMD is among the many folks using the VCS2009. Almost every CPU is designed using VCS. It plays a big role in large SoCs.”

Design companies have several activities such as test bench, debug, etc. All of these can now be parallelized. “Customer designs can be simulated on multiple threads,” Gandhi said. “Also, the applications can also be simulated on different threads, called application level parallelism. We can actually bring about 5-7X improvement in verification with the VCS2009.”

According to him, this product is already being used by some large customers. “This is our next phase of performance innovation. The processor roadmap is getting more and more multicore. We have over 200 customers,” he added.

The VCS distributes time consuming activities across multiple cores. Gandhi added that each core has a lot of computations. You may do lot of parallel activities with the mobile phones. All activities are now in parallel.

And how about the speed-up from parallel computation with the industry-leading Native Testbench (NTB)? He said: “We were one of the first to introduce all technologies as part of a single compiler. That brought the 5X speed-up. We did all of this in verification, and a test bench core was brought into verification.”

The combination of DLP and ALP optimizes VCS performance over multicore CPUs. Design level parallelism (DLP) and application level parallelism (ALP) — all CPUs can be threaded on different cores.

Low-power verification methodology published
Synopsys has published a book on industry’s first low-power verification methodology, along with ARM and Renasas. It is an attempt to bring technology to the mainstream — how to do low-power verification. There are other 30 companies who participated in this exercise.

On the CPF vs. UPF debate, he said that UPF is a standard where Magma, Mentor, Synopsys, etc. have participated. Cadence has CPF. Users can make use of this book and apply, on top of both UPF and CPF.

Introducing Discovery 2009
According to Synopsys, this solution is doing very well in the market. The company has seen strong technology leadership over the last two to three years. It has also created strong investments.

CustomSIM is a unified circuit simulation solution. “We have a software to silicon verification focus. We are all the way from system level design to RTL, to software verification, etc. Discovery has some technologies as part of that, noted Gandhi.

What has Synopsys done right?
A most interesting point in the EDA industry, I feel, has been the performance of Synopsys, in an otherwise difficult segment over the past year. So, what are the reasons behind this success?

Gandhi added: “Our management are all strong technologists. We have invested tremendously in bringing in strong technology leaders. In India, many companies needed R&D collaborations locally. For us, it was a big win when we invested in Bangalore. We work closely with customers delivering technologies that will address challenges two-three years from now.

Dr. Pradip Dutta elaborated: “Synopsys is very strong in product leadership (PL). The other two key areas are customer intimacy (CI) and operational excellence (OE). You need to be highest in PL. We have been very conservative even during strong times.”

That is indeed a marvellous thought! Those who are typically strong in technology, generally go on to develop great intimacy with customers, and all of this starts reflecting on their operations, which are anyway excellent! Here’s a message for those who wish to do well in tough times — strong product leadership, coupled with customer intimacy and well, corresponding operational excellence!

Focus on verification
Now that the focus is quite clearly on verification, how do EVE and the other verification companies stand out? EVE is currently in the emulation space. Gandhi added that EVE competes more wtih Cadence and Mentor. “We work with EVE on many accounts. Verification is all about finding bugs. Emulation has been more cyclical.”

According to him, Synopsys is now looking at tackling the next level — how do you reduce the overall cost? “We will go beyond selling tools. We would look at how to identify issues and saving verification costs.” I believe, verification takes up close to 70 percent of an overall design test.

Commenting on the EDA industry in India, both, Dr. Dutta and Gandhi feel it is still buzzing quite well, despite what’s been happening in the global context. “We have invested quite a lot. We have a large team here. We continue to collaborate with local institutions here as well,” Dr. Dutta added.

Premature to write off Indian fab story: Dr. Pradip Dutta

The previous blog was focusing on SemIndia and the notice it has received on the Fab City in Hyderabad, along with NanoTech. BV Naidu, a friend and an industry colleague, has put up a strong front, and is trying his best to ensure things get going in the IC wafer fab space in India. Best of luck to him and SemIndia. India needs a fab, much more than ever, now.

I also happened to have a brief chat with Dr. Pradip K. Dutta, Corporate Vice President & Managing Director, Synopsys (India) Pvt Ltd, another friend and an industry colleague. Although from the EDA industry, Dr. Dutta has great thoughts and ideas regarding the future of semiconductors in India.

According to him, building wafer fabs in India involves an element of national pride and should also make business sense, simultaneously. The government has to look at fabs from a national policy perspective. If there were any company breaking ground in India, to build a clean-room, we would have known, he states, which is very correct.

We all know that a fab is a highly capital intensive project. He says: “I hope we can see some concrete proposals by this time next year. It is too premature to say that the Indian fab story is disappearing.”

There is a need to bear in mind that fabs in India have a three-year window. So, there is no reason for getting worked up right now, as the window is still there and existing. Dr. Dutta adds: “The business people will only open up their cards in the final stages. I have reasons to believe by summer of 2009, there will be some actual stakeholders.”

A fab is a very economically complex business. In the next five-10 yrs, there is a strong feeling that there may be only three to four companies globally, as IDMs, and the rest move into foundry. Dr. Dutta stresses: “To expect India will have a 5bn, 45nm, capable fab is something that needs to be examined. The business case has to be the driver.”

The semicon policy has definitely been a good start. What has since happened since that the ancillary manufacturing industry has been taking advantage of the policy.

“The government is quite optimistic that as we reach next year, by this time, companies will firm up their plans, as the industry window is three years. We believe that concrete proposals will come in by that time,” reiterates Dr. Dutta.

The government wants to see a state-of-the-art facility come up as well. He notes: “Maybe, 50 percent of all ICs sold globally, can be built on 0.25-micron technology. However, under the current semicon policy, we want to encourage state-of-the art manufacturing.”

Given the current global economic scenario, it will take real effort on part of all the stakeholders and come up with a wafer IC fab. India seriously needs a fab! There’s a huge market out there, which needs to be tapped. Delays will only add to our slipping back.