Status quo of domestic EDA industry
EDA, short for "electronic design automation", belongs to the upstream industry of integrated circuit design. Modern EDA tools cover almost all areas of the integrated circuit industry, including integrated circuit design, integrated circuit manufacturing, integrated circuit testing and analysis and other aspects of automation tools, known as the "mother of chips".
Figure 1 Distribution of domestic and foreign EDA companies' product fields
The development of the domestic EDA industry can be traced back to the mid-to-late 1980s. China began to carry out the research and development of its own integrated circuit computer-aided design system in 1986, and released the first domestic EDA panda system in 1993 after many years of attack. Although the development of domestic EDA is tortuous and slow due to various factors afterwards, in the process, there are still a number of outstanding enterprises showing vitality in the domestic EDA camp, such as BGI Nine Days, Guilun Electronics, SMIC Group, Guangli Microelectronics, Core Vision, Core and Semiconductor, Blue Ocean Micro Technology, Ke Jingda, Hongxin Micro-nano, Core Huazhang, etc.
Domestic EDA companies usually choose to deepen their cultivation in their respective areas of expertise, launch tool products for specific processes or key links, and strive to establish absolute advantages in local areas and continue to achieve market breakthroughs. Among them, Core Vision Company is a local EDA manufacturer.
Integrated circuit analysis technology and related software originated in Silicon Valley, usa. In the early 1990s, commercial companies providing technical analysis services appeared abroad, such as TechInsights and Chipworks (merged with TechInsights in 2016).
In the 1980s, while the domestic panda EDA system was developed, China also began the research and development of integrated circuit analysis EDA software. Research institutes and institutions of higher learning such as the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Harbin Institute of Technology and Southeast University have made pioneering contributions in this field. During this period, the EDA software developed during this period is mainly used in specific integrated circuit analysis, and there is still a certain gap with foreign commercial software products.
Jiang Weijun, the co-founder of Core Vision, studied under researcher Hong Jiguang during his graduate studies at the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Researcher Hong Jiguang once presided over the completion of the national "Seventh Five-Year Plan" scientific and technological research project "Integrated Circuit Reverse Analysis System", the result of this project "Integrated Circuit Reverse Analysis System ICRES-I" won the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award in 1993.
Influenced by his mentor, Jiang Weijun came up with the idea of commercializing integrated circuit analysis EDA software. He found Ding Ke, a university classmate who was studying for a doctorate at the Institute of Software of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Faced with the industrial situation in which foreign manufacturers occupy most of the EDA market share, under the limited choice space, Jiang Weijun and Ding Ke decided to choose integrated circuit analysis and integrated circuit intellectual property identification as the first technological breakthrough after thinking.
In 2002, Core Vision Was Established as a supplier of integrated circuit EDA software. Ding Ke and Jiang Weijun led the R&D team to start developing commercial integrated circuit analysis EDA software, focusing on the automation substitution and innovation optimization of manual-intensive steps in integrated circuit analysis technology, and successively launched independently developed EDA analysis software products.
In 2009, the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the core vision jointly undertook and completed the "core electronic devices, high-end general-purpose chips and basic software" national science and technology major special project "integrated circuit design physical analysis technology". This project provided a solid technical foundation for the later research and development of core electronic devices.
Figure 2 The development process of EDA technology for integrated circuit analysis in China
EDA software is highly bound to the upstream and downstream industry ecology of integrated circuits, and a key to the breakthrough of domestic EDA software is the customer. The School of Computer Science and Technology of the University of Defense Science and Technology was an early key customer, and the EDA software for integrated circuit analysis of The Core Vision was successfully applied to a 350-nanometer, 300,000-door chip for the first time. In order to better support products, from 2002 to 2003, Jiang Weijun once carried out front-line technical support research and development at the National Defense Science and Technology University for up to 7 months, and the functions and performance of related products have been significantly improved.
While making breakthroughs in the research and development of EDA software technology, Chip Vision's software has been slow to make progress in market-based sales. At the end of 2003, Lu Maotian, chairman of Springsoft, a listed EDA company in Taiwan, was very surprised to see related software products and lamented that "there are still people in large regions who insist on doing EDA software." He suggested that Chip Vision can promote EDA software through technical services. Springsoft (acquired by Synopsys in 2013) has launched two industry-renowned EDA software: The Layout Design System Laker and the Error Detection System Debussy/Verdi.
In 2004, based on the comprehensive judgment of market demand, Core Vision Company made strategic adjustments to its own positioning and business model, and gradually transitioned to its own EDA software as the core tool, providing comprehensive technical services for integrated circuit design enterprises, and realizing the transformation from a software tool developer to a technology service provider. Subsequently, the relevant business quickly received positive feedback from the market, and the penetration rate of EDA software products of Chip Vision Company was gradually improved.
After years of continuous investment, Chip Vision has accumulated a large number of integrated circuit EDA technology research and development experience and achievements, forming a low-level common technology infrastructure with a dedicated database engine as the core. Since 2011, Chip Vision has begun to carry out the research and development layout of integrated circuit design EDA software.
Integrated circuit design can be divided into analog circuit design and digital circuit design from a large category, and the three giants of Synopsys, Cadence and Mentor Graphics (acquired by Siemens) in the United States have product layouts in all segments of integrated circuit design, and are deeply bound to the upstream and downstream industry chains, and the ecological barriers are extremely high. For example, the design of custom circuits (analog/digital-analog hybrid) is generally based on the Cadence platform, the digital class design generally uses the Synops platform, and the design rule verification generally uses the Mentor Graphics platform.
As mentioned earlier, the breakout strategies of domestic EDA companies mostly use single-point tools as a breakthrough, and gradually extend from points and surfaces to the whole process coverage. Therefore, the core vision aims at the key links such as front-end simulation optimization and back-end design verification in the large-scale digital circuit design of advanced processes, independently develops simulation and verification engines, and launches relevant EDA software products to support digital circuit auxiliary optimization and innovative design. Currently, Chip Vision's EDA software supports 16nm design and validation needs.
Figure 3 Core Vision launches the next-generation digital circuit design optimization system BoolSmart System
Surrounded by the dual embrace of policy and capital, China's semiconductor industry has flourished, and the number of local integrated circuit design enterprises has increased significantly, bringing huge market space to the domestic EDA industry. Localization of EDA is advancing, and more and more design firms are using local eda tools.
The analyst team of ASPENCORE, the world's largest electronics industry media group, conducted the 19th China IC Design Company Survey in early 2020. The survey results show that the software of many local EDA companies, including BGI Nine Days, Core and Semiconductor, SMIT, Boda Micro, And Chip Vision, etc., has been applied to a certain extent in the industry. BGI Nine Days, Qiulun Electronics, Chip & Semiconductor, Boda Micro, Chip Vision and other companies have been continuously selected as the top five Local Innovative EDA companies in China in 2018-2019 and 2019-2020.
Figure 4 Survey results of the 19th China IC Design Company Survey
In recent years, China has made major breakthroughs in the fields of manned spaceflight, lunar exploration engineering, Beidou engineering, supercomputing, and quantum communication, and behind these achievements is the joint innovation and unremitting struggle of the whole industrial chain of China's integrated circuits.
Figure 5 Renderings of the Chang'e-5 probe in orbit
After 19 years of development, The company has always adhered to the overall research and development idea of "creating dislocation competition for market demand, relying on independent databases to provide complete solutions, and fully compatible with mainstream commercial EDA software", and carrying out the research and development and promotion of integrated circuit EDA software.
The EDA software technology research and development of Core Vision Company has successively obtained the "Core Electronic Devices, High-end General Chip and Basic Software Products" National Science and Technology Major Special Project, National Security Major Basic Research Project, National Defense Science and Technology Innovation Special Zone Project, "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" All-Army Shared Information System Equipment Pre-research Special Technology Project, National Defense Science and Industry Bureau Technology Basic Research Project, "1219" Special Project, Beijing Science and Technology Plan, Zhongguancun Modern Service Industry Pilot Project, With the support of a number of major scientific research projects at the municipal level and at the national level, such as the High-tech Industrial Collaborative Innovation Platform of Zhongguancun National Independent Innovation Demonstration Zone, a mature and perfect integrated circuit EDA technology system has gradually been formed.
Core Vision's EDA software has been applied in more than 40,000 actual integrated circuit projects, with a total of more than 40,000 authorized certifications, used and taught by more than 30 universities at home and abroad, and more than 1,500 customers worldwide. Among them, more than half of the world's top ten semiconductor companies are core vision customers, half of the world's top ten integrated circuit design enterprises are core vision customers, and there are 8 companies with more than 8 cooperation projects in the past 3 years among the top ten domestic integrated circuit design companies.
In the post-Moore era, opportunities and challenges coexist, and the value of EDA software is further enhanced. Driven by the strong demand for domestic alternatives, the increase in national support policies, and the leading artificial intelligence and cloud computing technology, domestic EDA ushered in a golden period of development. Domestic EDA enterprises should catch up with the wind, continue to improve and break through core technologies, and jointly promote the full penetration of local EDA software into the integrated circuit industry chain.