'We offer customer specific solutions, not force-fitted'

What opportunity do EDA vendors see in optimizing the manufacturability of

design?



The opportunity for SoftJin is to develop customized EDA solutions that can

help in post layout analysis and enhancement of design in order to make it

manufacturable. With the move towards finer geometries, the design rule check

and associated physical analysis is becoming an increasingly complex task. Also,

the aggressive Resolution Enhancement Techniques (RET) and innovative Mask Data

Preparation (MDP) techniques need to be deployed in order to achieve silicon

success. SoftJin offers 'Nirmaan' post layout tool development toolkit that

enables our customers to develop next generation post layout tools such as DRC,

MDP, and RET.

What are the areas you are looking at to fuel revenue growth?



We have a more customer centric approach.

We develop custom EDA tools for the specific requirements of

semiconductor companies. So, often we are catering to the future needs of our

customers that are not being serviced by currently available off-the-shelf

tools. Some analysts have estimated this in-house EDA tool market to be as large

as $1 bn. Technology-wise, the two areas we are focusing on our in-house R&D

efforts are post layout CAD and tools for programmable platforms. These are two

areas that have  an emerging

opportunity for growth.

MNC EDA players have used India well to be globally competitive. As an

Indian vendor what's your strategy vis-a-vis the competition?



Our strategy is to offer significant value-add over competition by offering

our customers a solution for their specific needs, as opposed to force-fitting a

standard solution. In situations where there is a need for technology specific

or architecture specific tool, our approach of customized EDA tools is extremely

beneficial for our customers.

What business models do you offer to customers?



For developing tools for customer's requirements, we undertake projects in

commonly used service business models such as Turnkey and Time and Material.

Wherever, we are licensing our re-usable EDA building blocks (such as Nirmaan),

we offer an object code licensing business model.

Goutam Das



goutamd@cybermedia.co.in