Is quality too high a peak?

摘要

Like jumbo shrimp and military intelligence, the term "EDA quality" is an oxymoron for most working engineers. Electronic design automation companies are forever trying to catch up with Moore's Law by writing quality code to address the complex nuances of chip design. But for many tool makers today, the quality summit remains as elusive a goal as Mount Everest's peak once was for climbers. Yet EDA vendors believe that tool quality is steadily improving despite some inherent challenges that make these tools harder to develop than software for most other industries. The big three in design automation―Synopsys, Cadence and Mentor―have quality assurance programs in place to swat the bugs before their customers get an itch, and smaller operations have their eye on quality as well (see story, below).