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Are you considering moving your EDA workloads to the cloud? If so, you are not alone. Many chip makers are discovering an inviting environment in the cloud for chip design and verification.
For example, U.K. chip maker Arm announced at the end of 2020 that it was moving most of its EDA workloads to the cloud, resulting in an expected tenfold jump in throughput for chip design and verification. Arm plans to cut its data center footprint by at least 45% and its on-premises computing infrastructure by 80% as it completes migration to the cloud.
Dutch chip maker NXP Semiconductor followed suit in 2021, announcing that it would migrate most of its EDA workloads from its data centers to the cloud. And this year, Intel Foundry Services formed an alliance with major cloud providers and EDA tool suppliers to promote secure chip design and verification in the cloud. Cloud computing dramatically improves your time to market by eliminating the uncertainty of whether on-premises storage and compute infrastructure can handle EDA workloads.
So how do you move your EDA workloads to the cloud? Listed below are considerations that will encourage a smooth migration.
Determine the Best Workloads for the Cloud
EDA workloads shouldn't be moved to the cloud without a good reason. To identify the EDA workloads that will benefit most from the cloud, you should review each deployment to understand its compute and memory footprint, costs, and dependencies.
EDA workloads require specific hardware configurations. They should not be run in a standard cloud instance just because it is easy to access. In a best-case scenario, the instance may be overprovisioned. In the worst-case scenario, the workload will fail or underperform due to insufficient resources. For optimal performance, match the workload to the appropriate instance.
Weigh Data Cost
Typical EDA workloads involve gigabytes to terabytes of data. While most cloud service providers offer free data ingress, data egress usually comes at a cost. Optimal data management is crucial when determining workloads to move to the cloud and those to leave on-premises.
Focus on Adding Value
Consider both financial and functional factors when choosing a cloud architecture. Financially, infrastructure is a cost center, a tool for doing business. An enterprise must have a minimum set of capabilities in this area. As soon as you determine that cloud infrastructure would enable faster delivery of your products to the market than working on-premises, you should begin to move capacity to the cloud.
Conduct a Pilot Project
Examine the chip design process and identify a critical bottleneck that more flexible deployments could alleviate. A pilot project is an excellent way to learn about the process, discover weaknesses, and make any mistakes on a small scale. Remember, knowing what success looks like requires metrics.
Infrastructure enables more effective and efficient chip design and manufacturing. Even the most sensitive EDA workloads can be supported in the cloud, because it is resilient, elastic, secure, and mature enough to handle them.
Cloud computing can help you accelerate chip design cycles, increase innovation, reduce scheduling risks, and maintain product roadmaps. Moving EDA workloads to a cloud infrastructure is the logical next step.
The key point is that you should no longer focus on building on-premises environments for EDA workloads. Instead, identify a clear migration path to a flexible cloud infrastructure.
Synopsys Cloud can assist you on your journey. Our cloud-optimized EDA workflows make chip design and verification easier and faster. To ensure you have an exceptional experience, we work closely with the major cloud providers. We know what chip designers need in an EDA platform.
Synopsys is the industry’s largest provider of electronic design automation (EDA) technology used in the design and verification of semiconductor devices, or chips. With Synopsys Cloud, we’re taking EDA to new heights, combining the availability of advanced compute and storage infrastructure with unlimited access to EDA software licenses on-demand so you can focus on what you do best – designing chips, faster. Delivering cloud-native EDA tools and pre-optimized hardware platforms, an extremely flexible business model, and a modern customer experience, Synopsys has reimagined the future of chip design on the cloud, without disrupting proven workflows.
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Sridhar Panchapakesan is the Senior Director, Cloud Engagements at Synopsys, responsible for enabling customers to successfully adopt cloud solutions for their EDA workflows. He drives cloud-centric initiatives, marketing, and collaboration efforts with foundry partners, cloud vendors and strategic customers at Synopsys. He has 25+ years’ experience in the EDA industry and is especially skilled in managing and driving business-critical engagements at top-tier customers. He has a MBA degree from the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley and a MSEE from the University of Houston.