[CamperBob2]

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.

[gricardo99]

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)?