Emerging Markets A Big Opportunity, Fister Says

BANGALORE, India — EDA market leader Cadence Design Systems Inc. sees a big opportunity in the growth areas of emerging countries.

Growth in consumer electronics, communications and computing—as well as the automotive, industrial, government and defense segments—in economies such as India's are very appealing to Cadence, particularly given the fact that more semiconductors are now going into consumer electronics products than into personal computers, said Mike Fister, Cadence president and CEO.

"The use of semiconductors in these market segments has not reached anywhere near saturation point," Fister said. "Issues common to the three main market segments of consumer electronics, communications and computing that, however, need to be addressed are multimedia, low power and mobility."

Predicting that digital design is not going to get any cheaper, Fister said that platform-based designs will be practically everywhere in the next three years, given that they offer the advantages of cost, productivity and time to market.

"But, we need to think at higher levels of abstraction and let the tools do [more] of the development," Fister said. "Next-generation designs start with architectural exploration and next-generation implementation will reach into front-end design."

EDA firms have the opportunity to provide greater value to system OEMs by moving up their platform abstraction efforts, and Cadence will facilitate that with vertical market product initiatives, Fister said. Platform-based design is an under-utilized approach to address current design challenges, he said, adding that more design kits will be made available especially in the low power, mixed-signal and analog arena.

Fister said Cadence's Power Forward Initiative is in the process of adding more members, which he said would urge the various development centers of Cadence, including the two it has in India, to think of end-to-end, holistic solutions.