EDA Sales Up Again

EDA continued to post strong growth, setting records as an industry and proving the resilience of the tools industry, which has been showing positive numbers for 16 consecutive quarters.

Revenue for Q4 of 2013 were $1.881 billion, up from $1.779 billion in the same period in 2012, according to numbers provided by the EDA Consortium. For the year, revenue hit $6.932 billion, up 6.1% from annual revenue in 2012.

“Ever since the downturn in 2008, the market for EDA has grown,” said Wally Rhines, chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics and board sponsor for EDAC’s Market Statistics Service. “By geography, Europe was flat and Japan continues to be relatively weak. And deep in the numbers, physical design grew in everything but place and route. But what these numbers show is there has been consistent growth in design and software. It’s healthy and steady.”

One of the strongest areas of growth was PCB design, which grew 14.2% in Q4 2013 compared to Q4 2012. PCB design has become significantly more complex over the past few years—to the point where it now requires automation of circuitry that in the past was drawn manually. Some boards are now up to 50 layers thick, and power and signal integrity analysis is now required, spawning a boom in tools serving this part of the market.

“There are a lot more people using sophisticated tools,” said Rhines.

Source: EDAC

One shift that also has driven EDA growth is the role of systems vendors designing their own chips—Apple, Samsung, Google and Facebook, among others. Unlike in the past, when EDA companies sought to improve upon internally developed tools for companies such as IBM and Texas Instruments, the newcomers into the chip design space buy almost all their tools. That has provided a steady new stream of revenue for EDA, particularly in the areas of thermal and stress analysis.

IP revenue was up 4.2% in Q4 compared with the same period in 2012. In addition, services revenue was up 6.1% for the same period.

By geography, the Americas accounted for $822.1 million in products and services in Q4, up 7.2% from 2012. Asia Pacific grew 12.1% to $472.7 million, while Japan dropped 5.4% in the same period.