Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools work together in a design flow that chip designers use to design and analyze entire semiconductor chips. Since a modern semiconductor chip can have billions of components, EDA tools are essential for their design; this article in particular describes EDA specifically with respect to integrated circuits (ICs).
Synopsys, Inc. is an American electronic design automation (EDA) company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that focuses on silicon design and verification, silicon intellectual property and software security and quality. Synopsys supplies tools and services to the semiconductor design and manufacturing industry. Products include tools for logic synthesis and physical design of integrated circuits, simulators for development, and debugging environments that assist in the design of the logic for chips and computer systems. As of 2023, the company is a component of both the Nasdaq-100 and S&P 500 indices.
EE Times is an electronics industry magazine published in the United States since 1972. EE Times is currently owned by AspenCore, a division of Arrow Electronics since August 2016.
Electromigration is the transport of material caused by the gradual movement of the ions in a conductor due to the momentum transfer between conducting electrons and diffusing metal atoms. The effect is important in applications where high direct current densities are used, such as in microelectronics and related structures. As the structure size in electronics such as integrated circuits (ICs) decreases, the practical significance of this effect increases.
OrCAD Systems Corporation was a software company that made OrCAD, a proprietary software tool suite used primarily for electronic design automation (EDA). The software is used mainly by electronic design engineers and electronic technicians to create electronic schematics, and perform mixed-signal simulation and electronic prints for manufacturing printed circuit boards (PCBs). OrCAD was taken over by Cadence Design Systems in 1999 and was integrated with Cadence Allegro in 2005.
Placement is an essential step in electronic design automation — the portion of the physical design flow that assigns exact locations for various circuit components within the chip's core area. An inferior placement assignment will not only affect the chip's performance but might also make it non-manufacturable by producing excessive wire-length, which is beyond available routing resources. Consequently, a placer must perform the assignment while optimizing a number of objectives to ensure that a circuit meets its performance demands. Together, the placement and routing steps of IC design are known as place and route.
The Design Automation Conference, or DAC, is an annual event, a combination of a technical conference and a trade show, both specializing in electronic design automation (EDA).
The Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference, or ASP-DAC is the international conference on VLSI design automation in Asia and South Pacific regions, the most active region of design, CAD and fabrication of silicon chips in the world. The ASP-DAC is a high-quality and premium conference on Electronic Design Automation (EDA) like other sister conferences such as Design Automation Conference (DAC), International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD), Design, Automation & Test in Europe (DATE). Founded in 1995, the conference aims to provide a platform for researchers and designers to exchange ideas and understand the latest technologies in the areas of LSI design and design automation.
Design, Automation & Test in Europe, or DATE is a yearly conference on the topic of electronic design automation. It is typically held in March or April of each year, alternating between France and Germany. It is sponsored by the SIGDA of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Electronic System Design Alliance, the European Design and Automation Association (EDAA), and the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA). Technical co-sponsors include ACM SIGBED, the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS), IFIP, and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).
Cadence Design Systems, Inc., headquartered in San Jose, California, is an American multinational computational software company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD, Inc. The company produces software, hardware, and silicon structures for designing integrated circuits, systems on chips (SoCs), and printed circuit boards.
Unified Power Format (UPF) is the popular name of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard for specifying power intent in power optimization of electronic design automation. The IEEE 1801-2009 release of the standard was based on a donation from the Accellera organization. The current release is IEEE 1801-2018.
Dr. Rudolf Maria "Ruud" Tromp is a Dutch American scientist at IBM Research Division, Thomas J. Watson Research Center and a Physics Professor at Leiden University.
Solido Design Automation Inc. is an electronic design automation (EDA) software company, headquartered in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The company develops software for analog/mixed-signal and custom integrated circuits. The company was founded in 2005 and is funded by BDC Venture Capital, Victoria Park Capital, and Golden Opportunities Fund.
Altium Designer (AD) is a PCB and electronic design automation software package for printed circuit boards. It is developed by Australian software company Altium Limited. Altium Designer was previously named under the "Protel" brand.
Massoud Pedram is an Iranian American computer engineer noted for his research in green computing, energy storage systems, low-power electronics and design, electronic design automation and quantum computing. In the early 1990s, Pedram pioneered an approach to designing VLSI circuits that considered physical effects during logic synthesis. He named this approach layout-driven logic synthesis, which was subsequently called physical synthesis and incorporated into the standard EDA design flows. Pedram's early work on this subject became a significant prior art reference in a litigation between Synopsys Inc. and Magma Design Automation.
Automation engineering is the provision of automated solutions to physical activities and industries.
Anirudh Devgan is an Indian-American computer scientist and CEO. As a scientist, Devgan is known for his contributions to electronic design automation, specifically circuit simulation, physical design and signoff, statistical design and optimization, and verification and hardware platforms. A fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, he is also member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Kathryn Kranen is an American electronic design automation engineer and business executive.
Lawrence Pileggi is the Coraluppi Head and Tanoto Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a specialist in the automation of integrated circuits, and developing software tools for the optimization of power grids. Pileggi's research has been cited thousands of times in engineering papers.
Igor Leonidovich Markov is an American professor, computer scientist and engineer. Markov is known for mathematical and algorithmic results in quantum computation, work on limits of computation, research on algorithms for optimizing integrated circuits and on electronic design automation, as well as artificial intelligence. Additionally, Markov is a California non-profit executive responsible for aid to Ukraine worth tens of millions dollars.
