Instead of having to choose to run on-prem or in the cloud, with attendant upload times and costs, the new True Hybrid offering from Cadence creates a dynamic environment for chip and system design.
When creating a new chip, design teams currently have to chose whether a specific task in the EDA workflow (design, verification, emulation, PCB layout, …) will run in their own data center, where they can control security and resource utilization, or in the cloud where they have access to practically unlimited elastic compute resources. To do the former, they must spend capital on an expensive, and limited, compute infrastructure. To do the latter, they need to upload massive data files to the cloud, which takes time and costs money.
Both Cadence and Synopsys have extensive cloud solution portfolios, both in public clouds and their own managed client-facing clouds. In fact, Cadence already enjoys a significant following of their current cloud offering, with over 350 customers using the Cadence Cloud portfolio for their electronic design work. And the Cadence Cloud is indeed secure: the portfolio is ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and ISO/IEC 27017:2015 security certified and follows the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA)-recommended controls.
Enter the True Hybrid Cloud
However, a specific tool used in in the workflow has historically been selected to run on cloud, or on prem. With the new True Hybrid cloud, design teams can avoid moving the entire design data set to the cloud. Instead of a “lift-and-shift” approach, True Hybrid allows users to move only that portion of a file (perhaps 20%) needed for computation to the Cadence-managed cloud and keep the rest on-prem or in a pubic cloud.
Early Results
Early access customer M31 realized a 25x reduction in set up time, and 5x total turnaround time speedup. Teradyne has leveraged the hybrid solutions from Cadence to achieve significant accuracy in a fraction of the time and reduction in design re-spins. And Novelda used the design environment and infrastructure from Cadence without compromising Capex efficiency – critical for a growing business, and gained benefits such as the resource efficient scalability, collaboration and security of Cadence Cloud.
“Cadence Cloud’s new features will enable true Hybrid Cloud, eliminating the need for challenging tasks associated with ‘lift and shift’ as well as solving the problem of large file sync commonly found in the EDA workloads by only moving the right file and the part of the file that’s needed to perform the job. Cadence Oncloud (managed cloud) will seamlessly integrate with customer’s data centers (on prem or public cloud) and transfer files bi-directionally only where it’s needed in real-time, thus making our cloud truly on-demand Hybrid cloud”, Tarak Ray, Chief Information Officer, Cadence.
Conclusions
The True Hybrid cloud is a great example of an EDA vendor making life easier for their customers. Its not as if someone is going to decide to use Cadence because it enables this level of dynamic resource utilization. Designers typically pick a vendor because of what they perceive as an advantage for their specific task, chip, or workflow. But a design team typically uses tools from a broad suite of vendors, and could decide that True Hybrid gives them an advantage they would want to apply to their non-Cadence tools, and consider making a change.
Smart move, Cadence. As these workloads increasingly require significant GPU capacity, more EDA customers will evaluate cloud hosted simulation and analysis, and the True Hybrid approach reduces one of the bigget hassles in cloud adoption.
Disclosures: This article expresses the author’s opinions and
should not be taken as advice to purchase from or invest in the
companies mentioned. Cambrian-AI Research is fortunate to have many, if not most, semiconductor firms as our clients, including Blaize, BrainChip, CadenceDesign, Cerebras, D-Matrix, Eliyan, Esperanto, GML, Groq, IBM, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm Technologies, Si-Five, SiMa.ai, Synopsys, Ventana Microsystems, Tenstorrent and scores of investment clients. We have no investment positions in any of the companies mentioned in this article and do not plan to initiate any in the near future. For more information, please visit our website at https://cambrian-AI.com.
