Ray Bingham, the former CEO of Cadence (CDN), is leaving the company for good. This concludes an era of Cadence, perhaps an era Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry as well.
EDA was once a proud industry, especially in the 90's. Technology innovation on software tools makes possible to build IC chips with millions of transistors. A copy of EDA tool can easily cost $100K, per year! Research on EDA tools was a hot topic in Universities. I watched an TV interview of Jerry Yang, Yahoo founder. Before his Yahoo idea took off, he was planning to work on his Ph.D in Stanford focus on the EDA related research.
In the new millennium, innovation in the EDA seems to stall. Coincidently, it is the same time frame Ray became CEO of CDN. The big guy in EDA (including CDN of course) believe it is more effective to acquire start-up with good technology, rather to build on your own. It is no wrong to buy good technology. The problem is, once the start-up is bought, the engineers acquired will become less motivated to innovate (perhaps they are safe now!?). And for the big guys, the potential competitor is now gone, so just focus on marketing and try to sell more this and that.
When will a Google of EDA emerge ... I wonder!?
Related EE Times article
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