Could EDA be used to solve the world's most difficult problems e.g. access to food and water, and ending disease and global warming? This is the intriguing thesis of Steven Levitan, Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, and Chairman of DAC being held this week in San Diego.
EDA solves some of the most complex problems known to man where huge numbers of different inputs have to be taken into account to arrive at a result which works.
EDA's methods - 'abstraction, extraction, optimisation and synthesis', according to Levitan - could be applied to world problems where EDA's ability to work at a high level of abstraction, while accepting multiple inputs from hierarchies of interacting influences, produces efficient simulations of working solutions.
Levitan sees EDA already being used for problems outside chip design such as automotive design, traffic routing systems, drug design, biology and health care.
Instinctively, one feels, a software programme would have much more chance of solving the problems of, say, Africa, than the politicians.
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