January - 2013 - issue > In My Opinion

EDA Industry: A Catalyst for change in the Automotive Space

Walden C Rhines

Chairman & CEO- Mentor Graphics Corp

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Forward

Headquartered in Wilsonville, OR, Mentor Graphics, Inc (NASDAQ: MENT), is a multinational corporation dealing in electronic design automation (EDA) for electrical engineering and electronics. With a market cap of $ 1.82 billion, the company is one among the 'Big Three' in the EDA industry.

As the automotive industry awakens to the need of technically advanced designs, it provides a much needed boost to the EDA industry. Leading producers such as TATA, Mahindra & Mahindra, Ashok Leyland among others are leading the charge by being the early adopters of design automation. The central theme of change for today is central design. Complexity has increased manifolds, thus system design techniques have to be applied to chip design. More system design companies have to adopt EDA techniques to design systems.

Opening for EDA players in the automobile segment

There are Opportunities galore owing to standardization. GENIVI is a big standard. It enables companies to get together and develop basic range of products that can be used across a wide range of vehicles. Earlier every automotive company had custom infotainment for their vehicles and they had their own tier 1 suppliers. Now with open standards there is more opportunity to automate design and develop better products.