Why should a designer look to Synopsys for SoC design tools and not develop his own in-house?
Norm: Synopsys spends literally hundreds of millions of dollars on R&D to develop these tools. As I’ve said, we’ve got ties to the different foundries and the different foundry processes. We have links into the semiconductor equipment manufacturers and are working closely with them. For designers to try to develop those tool sets on their own — for most companies, anyway — would be virtually impossible. They just can’t justify that kind of investment. What about the argument that one should buy design tools only from real designers? Norm: It’s an interesting comment. At Synopsys, the Solutions Group has two components: The IP group and our Design Services organization. Both create designs. The IP Group designs blocks of IP that get integrated into chips; on the services side, we are in fact designing chips and working with our customers to design chips. You actually do offer the design service itself? Norm: Absolutely. Between the two groups, we’re able to feed back a significant amo
