| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
| Total Annual Revenue (Billion) | 10.5 | 14.8 | 20.5 |
| Number of the Enterprise | 64 | 72 | 70 |
| Number of Listed Companies | 1 | 2 | |
| Financing Company of the Year | 12 | 33 | 24 |
| Annual Number of Financing | 20 | 43 | 28 |
| Annual Financing Amount | ＞20 | ＞60 | ＞80 |
| Number of Samsung SATA-EDA ecosystem partners | 1 | 5 | 7 |
| Number of TSMC ecological partners | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Number of first prizes in the International EDA Competition | 1 | 3 | |
| [email protected] Undergraduate student group | 1 | 1 | |
| [email protected] Graduate Student Group | |||
| [email protected] Undergraduate student group | 1 | ||
| [email protected] Graduate Student Group | |||
| ICCAD Number of conference papers | 13 | 19 | 24 |
| DAC Number of conference papers | 53 | 85 |
China EDA Market Situation
According to research conducted by the ChipInsight Institute, the global EDA/IP/design services market reached $15 billion in 2022, with the United States accounting for 48% of the market share and Mainland China accounting for 16% (approximately RMB 16 billion).
The top three or five companies in the world all come from the United States, with their market share exceeding 90%.
Out of the RMB 16 billion in Mainland China, the top three global EDA companies, Synopsys, Cadence, and Siemens EDA, collectively account for more than RMB 11 billion.
The overall situation of EDA in mainland China
According to research data from the ChipInsight Institute, the overall revenue of EDA companies in Mainland China is expected to exceed RMB 2 billion for four companies, and the total revenue of these four companies is expected to exceed RMB 1.6 billion in 2022. The overall revenue of EDA companies in Mainland China in 2022 is expected to account for 2% of the global market and 12.5% of the domestic market.
At the same time, according to the Core Idea Research Institute’s statistics, the actual number of EDA companies in Mainland China decreased by two in 2022 compared to 2021. Mergers and acquisitions in 2022 that had an impact on the actual number of EDA companies included the acquisition of Shunyao Electronics by Xinhua Zhang in September 2022, the acquisition of Xinda Technology by Huada Jiutian on October 18, 2022, the acquisition of Xinyinwei by Jiguangxindesign in December 2022, and the acquisition of Guoweijingrui by Si’erxin on December 26, 2022.
In 2022, the EDA race in Mainland China continued to explode, with Huada Jiutian and Guangli Micro listing on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange within a week, bringing the total number of EDA companies listed in Mainland China to three. In addition, in 2022, 24 companies completed 28 rounds of financing, with a total financing amount exceeding RMB 8 billion. The number of participating companies in financing decreased by 9 compared to 2021, and the number of financing rounds decreased by 15 compared to 2021’s 43 rounds.
Ecosystem Partners
In recent years, EDA companies in Mainland China have not only gained recognition from local semiconductor companies, but also from many international large-scale semiconductor companies.
From the EDA collaboration alliance list announced by TSMC, it is known that Huada Jiutian and GaoLun Electronics have been their partners for many years.
Samsung’s wafer foundry ecosystem SAFE EDA has seven partners, including Huada Jiutian, GaoLun Electronics, Hongxin Micro, Xinhe Semiconductor, Xingxin Technology, Guangli Micro, and Arcas.
International EDA Competition
In 2022, China’s mainland achieved remarkable results by winning first place in several global EDA contests, which fully demonstrates the significant progress of Chinese universities in EDA research and development.
At the ISPD 2022 Contest, the team from Xi’an University of Electronic Science and Technology and Hongxin Micro-Nano Alliance achieved a complete elimination of potential security threats in 12 test layout examples after two months of algorithm design and optimization method development. They also improved the comprehensive design performance, including initial design area, power consumption, and speed, by nearly twice. They obtained excellent results with nine first places in the 12 test cases, winning first place in the ISPD competition with the highest overall score. This is the first time that a Chinese mainland university has won first place in this competition. (Information from the official website of the School of Microelectronics, Xidian University)
The CAD [email protected] 2022, problem B was “3D Placement with D2D Vertical Connections,” provided by Synopsys. Die-to-Die (D2D) technology is one of the most widely used chiplet technologies currently and is a key technology for breakthroughs in 3D chip design in the future, bringing higher yields, better timing, and lower costs. The layout is an extremely important part of physical design, and the quality of unit placement directly affects the chip’s PPA (Performance, Power, Area).
The contest required participating teams to partition the netlist into two parts and determine the specific location of each unit in its corresponding layer, considering many complex constraints such as different processes on different layers, layer utilization, mixed bonding pad numbers, and spacing constraints, to minimize the total wire length. Solving this problem is critical to improving the quality of 3D chip design.
The Chinese mainland teams swept the top three places, with the iEDA 3DPlacer team from Peng Cheng Laboratory (advised by Li Xingquan and Huang Zhipeng; team members: Chen Shijian, Zhao Xueyan, Qiu Yihang, Li Jiangkao), the SEU Placer team from Southeast University (advised by Zhu Ziran and Yang Jun; team members: Mei Yangjie, Shen Fuheng, Shi Yuejian, Liu Hong), and the CUPID team from Peking University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (advised by Lin Yibo and Yu Bei; team members: Peiyu Liao, Yuxuan Zhao, Dawei Guo, Shuo Yin) taking the top three places. (Thanks to Li Xingquan from Peng Cheng Laboratory for providing the contest explanation)
The CAD [email protected] 2022, problem C was “Microarchitecture Design Space Exploration,” provided by DAMO Academy. The problem was to explore the microarchitecture design space for the RISC-V-based BOOM processor, aiming to find more optimized points in terms of performance/power/area by executing as few VLSI flows as possible.
The participating teams mainly searched for new design points through optimization algorithms within the framework provided by the contest, evaluated performance/power/area through VLSI flows, and iterated until the algorithm reached the upper limit or converged. The EDA Rushing team from Fudan University and Noah’s Ark Lab (advised by Yang Fan; team members: Shen Jinyi, Wu Zheng, Yi Xiaoling, Lu Jialin, and Lü Wenlong) won first place. (Thanks to Yang Fan from Fudan University for providing the contest explanation)
About SRC (Student Research Competition)
In 2013, ICCAD SRC became a part of ACM SRC. The competition aims to provide a platform for undergraduate and graduate students to showcase their research achievements and demonstrate their research capabilities.
Following the first undergraduate champion, Song Yao from Tsinghua University in 2013, Xinfeng Xie from Peking University (2017), Zhuangzhuang Zhou from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2018), Chuangtao Chen from Zhejiang University (2020), and Zizheng Guo from Peking University (2021) have also won the ICCAD SRC championship.
In the ACM SRC global finals of 2022, Zizheng Guo from Peking University won the undergraduate championship, making it the second time a mainland Chinese student has won the ACM SRC global undergraduate championship after Zhuangzhuang Zhou from Shanghai Jiao Tong University won it in 2019.
