Is the Cloud a New Paradigm for Electronic Design?

Grazed from PCBDesign007. Author: Dr. Raul Camposano and Steven McKinney.

A cloud is typically defined as a set of virtualized resources, most commonly software, platforms, and infrastructure that can be accessed through the Internet. Cloud computing can be private, meaning that the resources are in-house, or they can be public, where a company offers cloud infrastructure as a service. To be useful, clouds tend to be large, providing the illusion of unlimited resources and are often associated with service (as opposed to licenses or capital goods) as a business model. One example is software as a service (SaaS).

A commonly held view is that the cloud is shifting the computing paradigm: Simply put, large-scale commodity computing (millions of servers) virtualized and delivered through the Internet is better than smaller computer centers, regarding cost of ownership, scalability, performance, and utilization. As a result, the cloud is being adopted widely across consumer and enterprise applications. We use cloud-based applications every day with e-mail, search, social media, and gaming. Every time you pick up your smartphone, the apps rely on sourcing data from another location over the Internet, which is cloud-based. Indeed, the cloud plays a role in our daily lives, but how can it be beneficial to electronic design?
At first glance the advantages of the cloud for designing integrated circuits, packages, and boards may seem obvious:…

• Numerous parallel jobs running simultaneously.
• On-demand computing resources.
• No need to purchase computers or tools upfront.
• Eliminates the need for dedicated IT staff.

But despite these benefits, electronic design has been a laggard in adoption of the cloud. As the first EDA company to have the cloud as a core component of its DNA, Nimbic often hears the concerns of organizations and their reasons for not adopting the cloud, so let’s take a look at some of these and put them to the test…

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