One of the earlier articles looking at Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for EDA that I have found is a white paper by Sharon Tan of Gary Smith EDA, titled “Software-as-a-Service in EDA - Time Again?”.  It made an interesting read, but I found myself thinking more in terms of “Software-as-a Service in EDA - a Blast From the Past”

That the EDA market is not a newcomer to the world of hosted applications is true enough. But SaaS for EDA started much further back than the Internet revolution and some of the application access business models explored but a scant few years ago. To my mind, EDA started its life in the SaaS model a long, long time ago.

Those who were around in the mid 70’s through mid 80’s will remember that access to EDA applications was primarily via a SaaS model. Software-as-a-Service was simply called “timesharing”. Companies like Control Data’s Cybernet Services hosted various apps (ECAD was the accepted nomenclature back then) on their hardware. End users paid for only what they used. 

Some companies were able to remotely access the hosting company. Others weren’t so lucky and had to work locally at the hosting company premises. Pretty inconvenient, but it worked - mostly!

Through standard billing processes built into the application code - very similar to how application vendors integrate licensing codes such as FLEXlm / Flexnet - both the hosting company and the application provider generated revenue from each execution of the application code. Exactly how much each entity received was quite flexible, depending on the tweaking of certain parameters in the billing code.

The hosting company also provided - at a price - short term and long term, on-line or off-line storage. Back then, this ws a pretty expensive proposition.

Interesting - this almost sounds like todays “Cloud Computing” paradigm. However, unlike todays Cloud Computing paradigm, the hosting company managed all of the end-user billing and paid the application provider appropriately. Maybe there is an opportunity for today hiding in this notion somewhere.

The rationale for this version of SaaS in EDA was much the same as today’s rationale - computers cost too much to buy, house and feed. And application software - whether source code rights or a perpetual binary license with on-going maintenance fees - was too expensive for all but the largest of companies to acquire.

The beginning of the end of this early SaaS in EDA model was the announcement of Digital Equipment’s VAX 11/780minicomputer. One aspect of the value proposition for SaaS in EDA was significantly mitigated - a company could acquire their own computer hardware at a relatively low price - not as low as today, of course - but significantly lower than the alternatives back then. SaaS in EDA was quickly replaced by in-house resources.

If we fast forward, we’ll see that rise of the microprocessor-based workstations killed off the minicomputer as an EDA deployment platform. The shift to a more server-based (compute farm) computing paradigm dealt a blow to the workstation market. Commodity priced hardware for both desktop clients and servers brought us to the present state of EDA compute environment.

And so it comes around again. Maintaining an internal compute infrastructure is getting to be very expensive. Application software is still a highly valued, but costly, budget line-item. Increasingly, end-users are looking at how costs can be mitigated and the notion of “I just want to pay for what I use” is coming back again.

Needless to say, I found it interesting to reflect on “what goes around - comes around” as it pertains to SaaS in EDA.  More down this path in later posts.

Meanwhile, I thought provide a link to the Tan’s original piece, but it doesn’t seem to be available on Gary’s site any more. Gabe Moretti’s website references the piece in a SaaS in EDA blog , but again, the link does not find the original article. My further searching did find what appears to be the identical text in EEtimes Europe and EETimes  India,  as well as this article the UK’s New Electronics. Happy reading!