What Is Electronic Design Automation (EDA)

When I mention about electronic design automationthe synthesis tool into few gates. Synthesis tool is
(EDA) a lot of people mistakenly think it is related toone of the examples of EDA tool.
electronic component manufacturing automationEven before a design using HDL is processed by a
which covers thing such as computer controlled ofsynthesis tool, there are other EDA tools that can be
conveyor belt and PLC programming. In fact the twoused by the designers to check if their HDL codes
are very different in nature.follow certain rules and guidelines. These EDA tools
EDA domain is purely in software. It is how softwareare called rule checker software. The HDL design is
are used to help integrated circuit (IC) designers tocheck again good circuit design guideline in order to
design ICs. These software are referred to as EDAcatch possible error which can caused circuit failure
tools.when it is converted into gates.
While the high level stage of the IC design requires aNetwork of connected gates which are synthesized
lot of creativity, but the low level and details part ofare called netlist.There are various verification EDA
IC design can be very repetitive, tedious and boring.tools can be used to analyze a netlist. The tools can
The EDA tools help the designers in doing thebe a static tools which can look at a netlist and
repetitive and tedious tasks.resolve it functionality mathematically. There are also
While in collage, students majoring in electronics learndynamic tools such as simulators which look at how
basic electronic system design using small number ofthe circuit behave virtually when it is operating.
components called gates. Basic system can beSimulated input voltages and currents are fed into
construct with less than 10 gates. By their final year,the netlist, and the simulated output is shown to the
the students will learn how to construct largerdesigner.
system which consists of up to hundreds of gates.Using these verification tools, designers can verify
This is not how it is done in the real world.that their design work - at least in controlled
In the real world, a system such as the Intel Pentiumsimulated environment. Final verification of the actual
4 chip is constructed from 14 million gates. And withchip is still needed because the long and intricate
the current trend, it will not be long before we passmanufacturing process can cause problem to a circuit
the one billion gates (in one chip) mark. This is sowhich not counted in during a simulated verification.
much different from what is thought in college. ThatUsing various EDA tools,such as synthesis tools,rule
is why in the real world, IC is design using differentcheckers and verification tools today designers have
method.been able to create a chip which contains multi million
On the very high level a system can be describedgates in it. Other than synthesis, there are also other
using special languages, called hardware descriptionEDA tools that help designers with other process of
language (HDL). Two most prominent HDLs arean IC design such as layout tools, and timing
Verilog and VHDL. Verilog is widely used by designersverification tools.
in North America, and VHDL is widely by theThe trend is to move into high abstraction using
european designers.higher level language, which is more abstract than the
Instead of designing a system on gates level, usingHDLs such as C or C++ programming languages and
these languages a system is described at a higherlet the software to do more and more task in
level. Then a software is used to translate this highgenerating the gates. Enabling of the use of C or
level description into gates level. This process is calledC++ in designing a hardware system is done with the
synthesis, and the software is referred to as agoal that it will convert some of the software
synthesis tool. One line in HDL can be translated byengineers become hardware designers.