Synopsys bullish despite rising chip complexity

Rick Merritt, EETimes
3/26/2013 1:01 PM EDT

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Transistors may or may not keep getting cheaper, but in either case, the semiconductor industry still has plenty of headroom for growth, said Aart de Geus.

The co-chief executive officer of Synopsys is bullish on the industry’s abilities to master FinFETs and double patterning, but cold on 3-D chip stacking. In a keynote and press roundtable at an annual users group meeting here de Geus also vowed to make the Verdi debugger recently acquired with Springsoft the centerpiece of an updated verification offering and to migrate the Eve verification system to run on graphics processors.

“Moore’s Law has become irrelevant compared to the impact of new applications,” de Geus told several hundred engineers here. “Even if transistors do not become that much cheaper the demand for more capabilities will continue at breakneck speed and the economics will be there."

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