如今，国产EDA已迎来最好的时间点......

The chip is known as the crystallization of the current industrial civilization, is the general existence of all intelligent products, and plays a vital role in the popularization of the Internet of Things and the development of the intelligent era. However, due to the late start of China, coupled with the early wrong development concept and the technological blockade of developed countries led by laos and the United States, China's chip research and development has developed extremely slowly in the past ten years, and it is overly dependent on foreign companies and technology.

In this context, when the Sino-US trade conflict broke out, Lao Us suppressed China from the chip side, causing many companies to fall into difficulties, even Huawei, which attaches great importance to the development of self-developed technology, has not been spared.

"Without good EDA software, it is almost impossible to make a good chip"

Today's chip designs are becoming more and more complex, with some SoC chips (system-on-chips) often having tens of billions of transistors. From the cost point of view, the cost of chip tapeout is high, the lowest-end chip tapeout costs more than hundreds of thousands of yuan at a time, and the advanced process even exceeds 100 million yuan, for some small and medium-sized chip companies, it may be possible that the tape-out failure 2 or 3 times will be on the verge of bankruptcy. Therefore, chip design needs to pursue success rate, EDA tools can greatly avoid chip circuit design and layout errors, reduce losses.

Although EDA is very important, its market size is relatively small, only tens of billions of dollars, but it leverages the trillion-dollar chip market, just like the throat, although small, but can determine the life and death of people

What is the worldwide EDA market landscape?

At present, in the EDA market, three foreign companies Synopsys, Cadence and Mentor Graphics directly or indirectly control the company almost monopolize the entire industrial chain, they and chip wafer manufacturing companies deep alliance, for fabs to provide basic IP, to help improve the basic IP library. Fabs have a richer IP library, which can quickly improve process capabilities and attract more chip design companies. In this way, the three major EDA companies achieve a win-win strategy binding with fabs, and it is difficult for other companies to re-enter the alliance.

The downstream chip design company to design the chip, the need for the fab to provide the development of the data package PDK, PDK contains the authorization verification of EDA software, EDA software without authorization verification can not use the PDK toolkit, so it is difficult for chip design companies, especially advanced process chips, to get out of the control of the three major EDA leaders.

In this context, domestic integrated circuit design and manufacturing enterprises began to seek to achieve import substitution of EDA tool software.
For domestic EDA manufacturers, this may be an important moment to turn crisis into opportunity.

At the same time, policies, funds, talents, and technologies are all developing for the better.

Δ China's relevant policy support in the field of EDA software

In terms of policy, due to the high difficulty and long cycle of EDA basic research, the return on investment in the early stage is small, and policy support is needed.In fact, the development of the EDA industry in the United States is also inseparable from subsidies. Government agencies such as the NSF, SRC, and Department of Defense have invested tens of millions of dollars a year to support the development of EDA since the 1980s.

In recent years, China has also issued a series of policies and subsidies to support. In November last year, the "14th Five-Year Plan" Software and Information Technology Service Industry Development Plan clearly proposed to focus on breakthrough industrial software, of which EDA software was listed.

In terms of funds, with the continuous support of national policies in the field of EDA, the industry has also begun to be recognized by the capital market.Since 2019, the financing environment for EDA start-ups in China has improved significantly, and there is no shortage of well-known investment institutions such as Hillhouse Capital, Red Shirt Capital, Shenzhen Venture Capital, Intel Investment, National Big Fund, and SMIC Juyuan. According to incomplete statistics, in 2021, there will be more than 15 domestic EDA track financing incidents, more than 12 financing enterprises, and the financing scale may exceed 2 billion yuan. It far exceeds the scale of more than 5 financing events in 2020 and more than 1.3 billion yuan. Among them, the maximum amount of single financing is more than 400 million yuan

At the same time, the head enterprises are also actively seeking to list, as of December 30, 2021, there are four EDA companies in China, namely Quanlun Electronics (listed), BGI Nine Days, Guangli Micro and Sinomice Core, which have applied for IPOs.

Diversified financing channels are conducive to the long-term development of EDA Software.In addition, the abundant financial advantages also help enterprises to quickly broaden their business boundaries through epitaxial mergers and acquisitions, equity investment, etc., and accelerate the creation of platform companies for EDA software to achieve full process coverage of chip design.

Δ 2018年至2020年中国EDA行业人才情况。

资料来源：赛迪智库

In terms of talent, although it is still relatively weak compared with the giants, the development speed is still relatively rapid. According to data from CCID Think Tank, in 2018, the number of foreign-funded enterprises in China's EDA industry was 2,100 and the number of local enterprises was 700; in 2021, these two figures increased to 2,400 and 2,000 respectively.

In terms of technology, some enterprises have also made breakthroughs. Among them, taking BGI Nine Days as an example, its analog circuit design full-process EDA tool system can reach the global advanced level in circuit simulation tools, and in the field of flat panel display circuit design, it will become the only supplier in the world that can provide full-process design solutions. According to its prospectus, by the end of 2020, the company has a total of 144 authorized invention patents and 50 software copyrights.

Obviously, policies, capital, and talent are already accumulating strength for this.

Nowadays, it may be the best opportunity for the development of domestic EDA, who can stand out?