Platform-Based Design Propels Growth in Europe

by Rita Glover

The EDA Consortium recently reported that the electronic design automation industry hit the $4 billion mark in 2001. By our calculations, that's not quite the case - it actually totaled $3,995.7 million, but we shouldn't argue about a bit of upward rounding. The industry has undoubtedly inched up to that milestone by now.

EDA Today, L.C. did a roll-up of the quarterly reports from the EDA Consortium's Market Statistics Service (MSS) which indicates that EDA grew six percent in 2001 over the previous year, as shown in Table 1. While six percent is normally considered to be a down year, the detailed breakdowns by the various EDA market sectors provide a far more positive picture of the industry in 2001, a very difficult year that the semiconductor industry would prefer to forget.

The year 2001 actually wasn't so bad for the EDA industry that feeds into semiconductors, because these EDA customers traditionally have had to "design themselves out" of every economic downturn. By taking a close look at what happened in 2001, we can discern many trends for 2002.

As expected, the overall industry growth rate for 2001 was pulled down by a drop of -22 percent in the services sector, which is comprised of design consulting and other services. But EDA product revenue - that's new license and maintenance revenue for all application segments: CAE, PCB/MCM, IC Layout, and SIP - was up 11 percent over the previous year.