The ongoing merger of embedded and EDA

by Tom Anderson, Breker Systems - Embedded Computing, Sept. 02, 2015 – 

Much has been written over the last few years about how the electronic design automation (EDA) industry must reach outside of its traditional boundaries to grow. Consolidation in the semiconductor industry and the enormous costs to develop and fabricate new chips has resulted in fewer EDA customers and fewer ICs being designed. The common conclusion is that EDA will expand into the embedded systems space. There's less speculation on this possibility in the embedded world, but it's worth examining the arguments.

It's natural for EDA companies to set their sights on software. They have primarily served the needs of hardware designers, a community that's growing, but is relatively small. In contrast, there are countless millions of programmers in the world. With the introduction of "apps" for smartphones and tablets, it seemed as if everyone became a weekend programmer. This represents a potentially huge new customer base. However, the market for selling tools to this community is very small, both in terms of need and willingness to spend.

Embedded sits between EDA and the great masses of programmers. Embedded engineers often do some amount of hardware design, usually involving circuit boards and programmable devices. Embedded designs are often complex enough to require simulation, circuit analysis, and other EDA technologies. Embedded programmers work much closer to the hardware than apps developers, and often have intimate knowledge of the entire system. Serving the needs of everyone on an embedded team should be good business, especially if the Internet of Things (IoT) really takes off.

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