Electronics Weekly puts its questions to an industry figure: Fergal Brosnan, CEO of IC Mask Design, the Limerick-based IC physical design company
Is EDA complexity holding back innovation?
EDA tools have developed to a stage where they are possibly overly complex as they attempt to support all types of designs. This complexity can at times be a hurdle for companies to get over, when they do not require all the functionality for certain designs.
What are the main EDA challenges for analogue designs vs. digital designers?
Historically, digital backend design was a bottleneck but EDA companies invested a lot of time and effort into solving this problem, and with great success. Even though we now have multi-million gate designs, the bottleneck has now shifted to analogue layout. This is simply due to the fact that analogue layout is still mainly a manual task, and the lack of automation here is significant. Some EDA companies have attempted full scale analogue automation, but we have seen limited success in this area.
Can you tell us of any technology trends emerging from the design work you do?
Previously, the trend was to use mature BiCMOS and CMOS processes, but we are seeing a significant shift towards 65nm and 45nm, particularly for RF based designs. I guess this is to achieve a USP, but working at these technologies has produced its problems.
Cambridge, Bristol... Where are the homegrown Irish technology companies based? Is it a thriving sector?
There is a growing indigenous industry in Ireland, with silicon chip design companies mainly focussing on locating in the major regions of Dublin, Cork and Limerick. What is important for these companies is access to quality engineers, and with major universities located in these regions, it is essential to have a local presence. It is definitely a thriving industry with a number of VC investments over the last 12-months. I guess the main limiting factor is access to engineering expertise. The universities are producing excellent graduates, but the graduate numbers do not meet current demand.
EDA companies are experts in their own tools, so why would anyone go to an independent for training?
Yes, EDA companies provide excellent training on their tools, but IC Mask Design is not competing in this space. Our training programmes do not cover tool based training, but rather the concepts for actually doing IC layout.
See: www.icmaskdesign.com/