Can China catch up in electronic design automation to spur its semiconductor efforts?
- EDA is a category of software tools used for designing advanced chips containing billions of transistors
China’s quest to become a semiconductor powerhouse over the next decade could get a boost from a sharper focus on developing the advanced software used to design chips.
While the country is currently behind the United States in electronic design automation (EDA) software development, technology industry veterans in the academe suggest that the world’s second largest economy has an opportunity to catch up in this field.
“There is less and less talent [involved in EDA in the US],” said Martin Wong Ding-fat, dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in an interview at the recent Smart China Expo held in Chongqing in southwest China.
“If you look at the main companies in this software market segment, the average age of many [of their EDA engineers] are like 50 years old now,” Wong said. “So this is an opportunity for China to invest [in talent and other resources to support EDA research and development].”
EDA is a category of software tools used for designing advanced integrated circuits, or chips containing billions of transistors, which serve as the “brains” that power everything from modern electric appliances, smartphones and personal computers to sophisticated medical equipment, cars and aircraft.
