Jayanta Roy comes from West
Bengal, and got his undergraduate
degree from the Indian Institute of
Technology, Kharagpur and his first job
was with Tata Burros (now Tata Unisys).
He came to the U.S. in 1987 and stayed
on to complete his masters and then his
Ph.D. in Colorado. In 1993, he had the
first taste of his future interest in
Electronic Design Automation, when he
joined View Logic’s satellite office in San
Jose. Two years later, he quit to begin
Triquest.

What is Electronic Design
Automation or EDA? As Roy describes it
in simple terms, it is the process of
getting all those million components in a
silicon chip to do what they are supposed
to do. Where the likes of Intel—which
focuses on chips and chips alone—have
hundreds of people working on the
function of each transistor and spend 3-4
years before a chip hits the market, others
like Cisco and Ericsson—which also
require chips to make their products
run—can’t afford this luxury and use
design automation to help them develop
their chips. And this is where Roy and his
Zenasis step in. Roy’s programs (EDA tools
are finally software programs) will help a
company improve its chips in areas like
speed—where the giants fight the MHz and
GHz battles; power consumption—in
increasing battery life; or in cost.

A tool that would help improve the
clock-speed of a chip can cost as much as
$100,000. But considering that this
investment would improve the speed by
an estimated 15 percent, the price is well
worth paying. Typically, these tools are
licensed out for a year and extensions
bring in more money—a classic economy
of low volume fetching high revenues.

But Roy is quick to defend such
tactics. “It takes years before a tool can
be developed. Also, increasing a clockspeed
by even five percent is a great
deal. Many of the IC chips in the market
have redundancy in components and it is
our task to optimize the design. That is
strenuous and needs total attention.
Thus, while our pricing is high,we bring
very high returns to our clients.”

Roy began Zenasis with an angel
investment of $1.5 million in 2000. His
partners came from academia,
semiconductor foundries, and the design
industry. Devashish Bhattacharya holds a
Ph.D. in electrical engineering and has taught
VLSI design at Yale for seven years. Vamsi
Boppanna, a renowned name in the
semiconductor industry, has worked with the
Fujitsu foundries and is the engineering head
at Zenasis.Over the last two years, the team
has grown to sixteen, which Roy says is a
sufficient number for him.

Zenasis is focusing on the niche
segment of developing design tools for
the “synthesis” phase (or the building
blocks stage) and the “place and route”
phase (where the chip is modeled),
where he sees the strength of his team
playing a big role. “The bigger players
focus on either the front-end with little
or no emphasis on the back-end, or
focus only on the back-end with some
tools for the front-end. We are now
looking at both segments and will decide
which one to focus on in the coming
years,” says Roy.

Partnering Zenasis are some big
names from the industry: Fujitsu in the
foundry, Cadence, Silicon Metrics and
Numeritech in the EDA. While the
semiconductor industry is suffering
from a slump, Roy feels that this is a
good time for the EDA industry, despite
being closely linked to the former. “In
the last year, seven companies went IPO
and had good results. Slump time is a
good period when companies focus on
R&D to build their next generation,”
says Roy.

Roy also handles business development
at Zenasis. “We grow with partnerships and
reliability.At the recent Design Automation
Conference, we had many prospects walk
in to our stalls, simply from our client
references. This is critical in this business.”
The quiet Roy has a lot resting on his
shoulders, but looks very capable of
handling it.

Roy also finds time to sing old Hindi
film tunes, as a member of a foursome
troupe. “We use karaoke and have sung
on stage for Prabasi events. It’s good fun,”
laughs Roy. And his secret to success?
“There is no easy way to big money,”
affirms Roy.