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"Analysis
of Cadence Cutting Another 225 Jobs" |
Analysis of Cadence Cutting Another 225 Jobs
“EDA
vendor Cadence Design Systems Inc. will eliminate 225 jobs—or
about 5 percent of the company's workforce… Cadence said the
job cuts will come primarily from resizing its worldwide field
organization to current business levels, decreasing investment
in the manufacturing side of design-for-manufacturing technology.”
EE
Times
Analysis
There are two things. First is the 5% layoff. This is basically
a sales layoff that we’ve been expecting for a few months
now. That fact that is only 5%, way under some estimates,
says that Cadence is recovering faster than expected.
Shutting down DFM is the other. On the surface it looks a
good decision; they have little chance of catching up with
Mentor or Synopsys. Look a little closer however and it brings
up a problem with their long term strategy. Their biggest
problem is with their back-end tools. DFM capability is becoming
integrated with a majority of today’s back-end tool set. At
65nm and below routers are all DFM capable. This is where
Cadence has really been losing ground. Both Mentor and Synopsys
have recently been successful in outsourcing some design tool
research from semiconductor vendors; Mentor specifically in
DFM. Without this leading-edge DFM knowledge, it will be highly
improbable that Cadence can regain the technical lead in ASIC
Layout, DRC and soon Custom Layout. Those three, plus the
DFM tools, make up a majority of the IC CAD market dollars
( See Figure 1).
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Gary Smith EDA (GSEDA) is the leading provider of market intelligence and advisory services for the global Electronic Design Automation (EDA), Electronic System Level (ESL) design, and related technology markets. 
