EDA在ic製造生態圈的重要性

sec2100

But Intel lost the battle for smartphones and tablets. Its Atom SoCs were not as power efficient as Arm-based SoCs and could not provide the same set of features. Initially, Apple planned to put an x86 chip into iPhones, but Apple and Intel failed to agree on the price, which is why the former installed a Samsung-designed Arm SoC into its first smartphone. Then Steve Jobs wanted to use Atom in iPad, but Tony Fadell persuaded him that using an advanced Arm SoC made more sense. By the time the smartphone market exploded in 2011, Apple introduced its 2nd Generation A-series SoC, Qualcomm had its Snapdragon S4 SoC with custom Arm cores, and there were half of a dozen relatively high-performance Arm SoCs from other vendors. Most of these chips were made by TSMC and Samsung Foundry and just a couple of years down the road these SoCs outsold Intel's CPUs when smartphones outsold PCs.  

These mobile SoCs needed a new process technology every year and demand for smartphones gave foundries a great boost. To develop these chips in a timely manner, companies like Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, and MediaTek needed very sophisticated and efficient electronic design automation (EDA) tools, which companies like Cadence and Synopsys delivered.  

sec2100

TSMC executed perfectly and introduced a new process technology for its clients every year, EDA tool vendors supported these nodes with a new set of tools, mobile SoC vendors churned out new products every year. This is when the ecosystem essentially became self-reinforcing.

sec2100

Furthermore, now that Intel offers manufacturing services for fabless companies, it must enable its clients to build their products using familiar EDA tools that are compatible with their flows. To that end, it needs to make it internal flows and processes compatible with those in the foundry industry.

sec2100

Using proprietary EDA software and fab tools is good as long as your process technologies meet expectations, you are confident that there is no need to outsource manufacturing of a particular design, and you are not going to make chips for others. Intel has been using custom EDA programs, process development kits, and equipment throughout its history, but with its IDM 2.0 strategy that involves both internal and external manufacturing, it has to migrate to off-the-shelf software and tools.