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by krupan 3494 days ago
The traditional EDA tool companies (Mentory, Cadence, Synopsys) all tried offering their tools under a could/SaaS model a few years back and nobody went for it. Chip designers are too paranoid about their source code leaking. I wonder if that attitude will hamper adoption of this model as well?
2 comments
CamperBob2 3494 days ago
Chip designers are too paranoid about their source code leaking.

It's more an issue of being able to reproduce an existing build later on. You can't delegate ownership of the toolchain to the "cloud" (read: somebody else's computer) if you think you'll ever need to maintain the design in the future.

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gricardo99 3493 days ago
I'm not so sure that is the issue. Currently you delegate ownership of the toolchain to the EDA vendor. Sure you have tools installed locally on your machines, but the tools typically have licenses that expire, so there's never a guarantee you can build it later with the exact same toolchain. Also EDA vendors end-of-life tools at some point, so even if you pay, that tool won't exist for ever, and the license will not be renewable.

I do think the issue with cloud is the concern over IP. There are not a lot of EDA vendors, so the chances that your competitor is also using that same EDA vendor is pretty high. I think companies are pretty wary of using a cloud hosted service where you could literally be running simulations on the same machines as your competitors. Can you imagine some cloud/hosting snafu resulting in your codebase being accessible by your competitors?

EDA companies also sell ASIC/FPGA IP, and VIP (verification IP), so there's also a pretty clear conflict of interest if they have access to your IP. So, if you're really paranoid, imagine the EDA vendors themselves picking through your IP and repackaging/reselling it as IP to other customers (encrypted of course so you can't readily identify the source code)?

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gricardo99 3493 days ago
the EDA tools need your source code (HDL) to simulate or synthesize the design. But with these F1 instances, potentially the model doesn't have that problem. You develop/design an FPGA solution (some type of accelleration), then you provide it as a service. You don't expose your source code to your end customer, or the EDA tool companies.

You do however, potentially expose your source code to Amazon. But possibly not, if you do your design/testing on EDA tools under your control, then deploy FPGA build packages to the F1 instances for hardware testing.

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