What are the typical costs of EDA tools?

[kishore2k4]

Hi guys,

I am just curious about the typical costs of Digital ASIC design tools like Cadence Encounter or Synopsys IC Compiler. Any ideas? Did anyone of you guys bought them for your own use? I know they are terribly expensive but just don't know how terrible.

cheers,

 

[gliss]

cheap eda tools

The cost of licenses for a tool like Encounter is complicated. It's typically mixed/bundled with other tools. Also the more licenses you buy, the cheaper it is per license. Also, the cost of the tool depends on what features you have activated and sometimes it even depends on how much CPU time the tool uses.

The cost of a single seat of SoC Encounter GXL for one year is probably about $750,000. But there is a complicated relationship between the IC tool vendor and the customer. Typcailly this relationship invovles many people. Vendor salespeople, account managers, managers, customer managers, CAD groups, procurement, etc.
So a company would wind up paying much less than the "list price". Which isn't even published as far as I can tell.

 

[Arturi]

eda licensing cost

List prices are really high! But you will end up paying much less. Specially for tools that many vendors provide. I once participated on the evaluation process that led to the purchase of a synthesis tool. It's incredible how end-price differs from list-price. Specially if you are tending to go to the concurrence. If you bargain well, you will see leading companies selling you their products for the same price as the concurrence just to start a relationship, specially if they see potential for further deals like IPs, and complementary tools.

 

[gliss]

how much do eda tools cost

Yes, and don't forget lucrative support contracts.

 

[kishore2k4]

mentor icstation

Thats all nice so how to get a good deal on Digital ASIC tools?

 

[ls000rhb]

Costs of EDA Tools

very expensive tool!

 

[gbaerf]

Re: Costs of EDA Tools

Hi Kishore,

It all depends upon the number of license u are taking , and what features ( editions) of the tools u are going to choose , How many language support u are going to take ( such as VHDL, Verilog , System C .... etc ).......

furthermore if u belong to India , I can help u out on getting the tools for complete FPGA flow...

regards/gbaerf

 

[spauls]

Re: Costs of EDA Tools

Cost also depends upon no. of licence user and company size.
All decided by sales person.

 

[boardlanguage]

Re: Costs of EDA Tools

gliss answered it best. If you buy *1* license of the tool, then you'll end up paying close to list-price.

But if you have a large corporate account, then the per-seat license cost decreases. Some organizations are so large (>1000 engineers), that they get a 'site-license', which is basically an unlimited-count license for the entire company. But those are the kinds of companies which are so rich they have servants which go to the marketplace to fetch other servants who went to the marketplace earlier. (reference to the Disney movie "Aladdin")

More seriously, some companies offer a 'pay-as-you-go' program (similiar to a pre-paid cell-phone.) For example, company 'C' used to sell edaCARDs in increments of $250,000 USD. The edaCARD pays for license checkouts, which are priced per/week. Of course, if you prepay a license for the entire year, it's MUCH cheaper than checking out the same tool 52 times.[/b]

 

[gbaerf]

Re: Costs of EDA Tools

what about the server farm concept is available with the tool vendors...
I guess when the companies has to sell multiple licenses then they use this concept ...
kindly give information in detail...

with regards,

 

[kishore2k4]

Re: Costs of EDA Tools

Wow! Compare that with $4500/year for unlimited licences for universities. With all that it would be better to outsource the designs to some university and just concentrate on marketting, just kidding.

But that eda server farm would be a really great idea for the poor-man joe.

 

[gbaerf]

Re: Costs of EDA Tools

Hi kishore2k4,

" But that eda server farm would be a really great idea for the poor-man joe "

I really did not understand that what did u meant by....

for your further in formation please check the following link for more information about EDA server farm concept :-

Added after 1 minutes:

 

[kishore2k4]

Re: Costs of EDA Tools

Oh, I meant server farm as in compile-farms which are provided as remote resource to work on for some fee. Like if I need access to some EDA tools only for a particular project then I can buy cpu time/just time on some remote deployment of those tools. Kind of like shell accounts, if you know what I mean.

 

[modelsim62c]

Re: Costs of EDA Tools

Oh, I meant server farm as in compile-farms which are provided as remote resource to work on for some fee. Like if I need access to some EDA tools only for a particular project then I can buy cpu time/just time on some remote deployment of those tools. Kind of like shell accounts, if you know what I mean.

The case you're talking about is a third-party (not the EDA-vendor) trying to rent out EDA license-time. All EDA-vendors forbid a third-party from reselling a license. Otherwise every university would buy the $4500/yr "all-you-can-eat" license, and rent out to industry.

So using a remote/out-sourced server-farm is ok (i.e. commercial "datacenter"), but the license must come from the EDA-vendor.

Few ASIC design-teams (in the US) use datacenters -- mostly due to security fears paranoia. The technical capacity is there, since the US web/IT infrastructure has a very large and healthy datacenter industry. Furthermore, as has been pointed out, with EDA-tools costing $100k/yr (per seat), hardware-costs are inconsequential. So it's almost NEVER the case where a company can afford 10 SOC-Encounter licenses (>$750K USD per license), but some how ran out of money for that $15,000 AMD Opteron/Intel Woodcrest server-box.

 

[kishore2k4]

Re: Costs of EDA Tools

Whatever the case, just because chip manufacturing is expensive doesn't mean the tools should also be. Tools should be reasonably priced but they can charge whatever they want for their tech support. In this way small companies can afford them without huge debts. Opensource tools are comming out but it will long before we can see a professional quality netlist-GDSII tool suite, also the design libraries are not easily accessible.

AFAIK, Alliance CAD is the only, more or less, complete suite for digital ASIC design. Others like Magic, LASI etc are for small custom layout designs. Heck, the big companies don't even provide demo versions for the average guy who is interested in IC design. Either he has to be in a company that can afford them or in a university that has licensed them.

Also modelsim62c, I wasn't pointing that universities should resell their licenses to the industry, infact the very point of the university license is not to do exactly that. As you suggested, some third party company or the vendor itself can setup those firms with time-sharing principles for small companies to get their wheels running. The big vendors don't care and the smaller ones don't wan't to.. mimicking the bigger ones.

 

[kishore2k4]

Re: Costs of EDA Tools

Sierra-DA Olympus Physical Design Suite, the base configuration is $1.6million per seat. Sierra Design Automation(now part of Mentor Graphics) was acquired for only $90million, around the cost of 55 licenses.

 

[boardlanguage]

Re: Costs of EDA Tools

Sierra-DA Olympus Physical Design Suite, the base configuration is $1.6million per seat. Sierra Design Automation(now part of Mentor Graphics) was acquired for only $90million, around the cost of 55 licenses.

Only $1.6M USD per seat?!? Wow, that's cheap...
The full-blown SOC Encounter GPS/XL (or whatever it's called) is a little over $2M USD. I don't know what Synopsys charges for its Galaxy Design Platform (RTL->GDSII) -- probably within +/- 20%.

The Synopsys FAE (field application engineer) told me almost NO ONE 'buys' the EDA-tools any more. Well 'buy' is the wrong word. Synopsys has 'perpetual' and 'time-based' licenses. The perpetual license are ridiculously expensive, but don't transfer true ownership -- the customer still must pay extra for maintenance (to get license updates and support.)

The time-based licenses are like year-long rental-agreements. This lets customers change their tool-composition every year, at contract renewal.

 

[kishore2k4]

Re: Costs of EDA Tools

I think Mentor Graphics Products are relatively cheap. Is it true?

 

[edaguy69]

Re: Costs of EDA Tools

I think Mentor Graphics Products are relatively cheap. Is it true?

it depends on what product. Calibre cost almost 200K per seat, more than Hercules or Assura

 

[kishore2k4]

Re: Costs of EDA Tools

I think Mentor Graphics Products are relatively cheap. Is it true?

it depends on what product. Calibre cost almost 200K per seat, more than Hercules or Assura

Isn't Calibre like the industry standard for verification. What about IC Station