What Are The Most Popular Chip Design Tools

EDA is an abbreviation for electronic design automation. It is a software application that is used to develop electronic circuits. To ease the designing of integrated circuits on a large scale, companies use EDA tools. EDA tools in VLSI help the VLSI engineers to design chips For various electronic applications such as processors for mobile and laptops.

There are several EDA tools in the VLSI industry. Let us walk through a few EDA companies and their tools useful for the synthesis, implementation and simulation of electronic circuits. Some EDA tools are free to use, while others require a license.

Top 11 EDA Tools in VLSI

eda tools in vlsi

1) Synopsys

Synopsys is an American EDA firm that provides silicon design and verification. Synopsys software package involves logic synthesis, place and route, behavioural synthesis, static timing analysis, Hardware Description Language (SystemC, SystemVerilog/Verilog, VHDL) simulators, formal verification, and transistor-level circuit simulation.

Popular tools – Primetime

2) Cadence

Cadence is one of the well-known EDA companies with tools in VLSI chip designing. Cadence EDA tools enable IC designers to design, simulate, synthesize, layout, along with DRC (design rule check) verification, LVS (layout versus schematic) verification, and parasitic capacitance verification, including community support and libraries.

Popular tool – Innovus

3) Siemens EDA (formerly known as Mentor Graphics)

Siemens EDA provides a complete semiconductor design flow that includes simulation, emulation, place and route, verification, design for manufacturing, and test. It also develops tools for computational fluid dynamics and wire harness systems.

Popular tool – Calibre

4) ANSYS Inc.

Ansys, Inc. is an American firm based in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. It creates and sells CAD/CAM and Multiphysics engineering simulation software for product design, test, and operations, and it serves customers globally.

Popular tools – PowerArtist, VeloceRF, Ansoft HFSS

5) Keysight Technologies Inc

Keysight Technologies is an American manufacturer of electrical test and measurement software and hardware. The name is a combination of key and insight, and it was intended to communicate the idea that the organisation unlocks key insights.

Popular tool – PathWave

6) Agnisys Inc.

Agnisys Inc. creates electronic design automation tools that create and verify intellectual property (IP), System-on-Chip (SoC), ASIC, and FPGA. Agnisys Inc., founded in 2007 and is based in Boston, Massachusetts. Their Research & Development centres are present in the United States and India.

Popular tools – IDesignSpec, IVerifySpec

7) Aldec Inc.

Aldec, Inc., established in Henderson, Nevada, is a privately held electronic design automation firm. It offers software and hardware for the production and verification of digital designs using FPGA and ASIC technologies. Aldec supplies an HDL simulation engine for other EDA tools like Altium Designer. It also packages specific versions of its tools with FPGA vendors like Lattice.

Popular tools – Riviera-PRO, Active-HDL

8) Lauterbach GmbH

Lauterbach GmbH is a German automation company in electrical design which specialises in in-circuit emulators and logic analyzers for debugging embedded systems. Lauterbach has branches in the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, China, Japan, France and Tunisia.

Popular tool – TRACE32

9) Zuken Ltd.

Zuken Inc. is a Japanese multinational firm that specialises in strategic consulting services for electronic engineering from start to finish. Zuken software is generally used for creating printed circuit boards (PCBs), Multi-Chip modules and many more. It also provides software for data management of electrical and electronic engineering.

Popular tools – CR-5000, CR-8000, Visula

10) Alliance:

The alliance consists of free CAD tools and compact libraries for VLSI design. It contains a VHDL compiler and simulator, logic synthesis tools, and automatic placement and routing tools.

The source code, binaries, and cell libraries are available under the General Public License.

Popular tool – Coriolis VLSI CAD Tools

11) Electric:

Electric, an EDA tool, was set up in the 1980s. Electric VLSI design system tools can draw schematics and layouts of integrated circuits. Electricity includes synthesis and analysis tools, such as design rule check, routing, and so on.

Popular tool – Electric VLSI Design System

EDA Tools Are Important

The role of EDA tools in VLSI is crucial as it aids in designing electronic circuits with automated tools. It reduces time in designing complex integrated circuits, helps in testing the electronic circuits and decreases production costs. Begin your career in the VLSI industry with VLSI professionals at ChipEdge .