Lip-Bu Tan on AI, China & Moore

EDA’s a systems game, says Cadence CEO

Rick Merritt, EETimes
4/12/2018 00:01 AM EDT

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — There’s still room for investing in accelerators for machine learning, one of several semiconductor segments China hopes to dominate, according to Lip-Bu Tan, a veteran investor. Wearing his hat as chief executive of Cadence Design Systems, he’s bullish on the silicon roadmap and says EDA companies need to move up to the systems level.

As much as 40 percent of Cadence’s users are now systems companies of some sort. They are a diverse lot from smartphone makers like Apple and ZTE to top-tier carmakers, mil/aero giants and the largest data centers that spend an estimated $85 billion a year on capital equipment.

“Quietly every one of [the big data centers] are designing some form of machine learning or other offload processor…We see more system companies driving optimizations and seeking differentiation in offering a better experience or more performance or lower latency or more storage capacity,” Tan said in an exclusive interview with EE Times.

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