Synopsys launched its Synopsys Cloud offering last year and is seeing significant demand from customers seeking to simplify access to EDA tools and IP. But a common question they get from clients pertains to the rest of their workflow. Few, if any, chip design teams use tools from only one vendor. They choose from various EDA suppliers and foundry services to best meet their specific needs. However, they would like to avoid the hassles of downloading from the cloud and uploading to another platform while simplifying licensing and entitlements. Customers would like some help further integrating elements of their workflow into a single cloud interface.
A Semiconductor chip. UNSPLASH
Synopsys has taken the first step to enable this cross-vendor collaboration in the Synopsys Cloud by introducing Synopsys Cloud OpenLink. The new program delivers increased optionality, allowing designers to efficiently access multi-vendor solutions in the Synopsys Cloud environment.
“Customers are successfully deploying complex design flows with EDA tools and IP of their choice on Synopsys Cloud across designs spanning AI, automotive, mobile, and data center applications,” said Shankar Krishnamoorthy, GM for Synopsys’ EDA Group. “The Synopsys Cloud OpenLink program is a natural extension of this solution to enable further robust design flows with industry-wide interoperability.”
The Synopsys Cloud OpenLink program helps eliminate the need for design teams to handle time-consuming and labor-intensive licensing and deployment details across EDA, IP and foundry vendors. Synopsys is releasing an application programming interface (API) specification that program members can use to deploy system-level integration with a highly secure and reliable transfer of entitlements to Synopsys Cloud.
“This first-of-its-kind program enables more designers to benefit from our SaaS offering, bringing the design ecosystem together to accelerate chip development through a seamless cloud environment,” added Krishnamoorthy. “The words ‘cloud’ and ‘collaboration’ are synonymous. For every market where companies, research communities, or OEMs with tier ones collaborate very closely, the cloud will be the mechanism for that collaboration. That’s why we’re in this exciting phase to build an open ecosystem.”
A few points Synopsys stresses are:
- Synopsys Cloud OpenLink enables highly secure customer entitlements and seamless access to ecosystem partner solutions through an open API.
- Products from Ansys, GlobalFoundries, Keysight Technologies, and Microsoft are available now on Synopsys Cloud.
- Other chip design ecosystem vendors are invited to join the Synopsys Cloud OpenLink program.
The last point could be critical to the long-term success of cloud adoption in the industry, as additional ecosystem vendors who are not currently part of the program could join based on mutual customer needs.
Conclusions
Synopsys is listening to its customers and building an API interface that foundries, IP providers and other EDA vendors can embrace to provide a single cloud interface across the chip development workflow. It’s a great idea; we hope other vendors welcome it to serve their clients better.