[Cyph0n]

And I’m not sure why you still think that EDA tools are so simple. I guess we’re at an impasse, then.

Going back to my first comment: I would be extremely impressed if China is able to build a home-grown, state-of-the-art EDA toolchain. I also still think that the US should work to protect its existing advantage in this area.

[thawaway1837]

The poster isn’t saying they are simple. The poster is claiming they are complex enough that they are non trivial to create and maintain, and not expensive enough that it’s worth it for these companies to go through the effort to create an alternative. (50k per seat, which almost certainly is lower on an enterprise license, is about 20-25% of the cost of an employee, and probably lower when you consider the non salary costs of an employee such as benefits, payroll taxes, office seat rent, food, etc). The equation obviously changes when the lack of availability of the tool is an existential threat and therefore worth billions.

[CharlesColeman]

> I would be extremely impressed if China is able to build a home-grown, state-of-the-art EDA toolchain.

Software is something that's relatively easily stolen, and I'm kinda skeptical it's a national-interest trade secret that can be effectively protected. It probably wouldn't be that hard for a nation-state to hack the EDA vendor and grab their source tree and a build server image. Even if an obviously-pirated version is never released, that level of access would greatly accelerate the development of a workalike clone. That clone may not end up being state of the art, but it could be good enough to neutralize any advantage.

[fspeech]

You seem to be convinced that software vendors could unilaterally control where and how their software is used. If they have this kind of power why do they need copyright protection in the first place? Why do we need a trade war as the US supply a majority of software in use, some of which far more critical than EDA software.