From chips, systems to applications, Hejian Industrial Software has written a new pattern of domestic industrial software

The digital economy has given rise to a large number of smart devices, such as smartphones and IoT devices, which generate huge amounts of data and require high-performance chips to process them. According to forecasts, the smart device market will reach $6.9 trillion by 2030. At the same time, technologies such as 5G, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and intelligent manufacturing also put forward higher requirements for high-performance chips.

This also makes chip design and verification a key part of the technology industry. As China's semiconductor industry is rapidly emerging, Electronic Design Automation (EDA) is also playing a key role in this wave as an important tool for chip design and verification.

At the 11th EEVIA Annual China Hard Technology Media Forum and Industry Chain R&D Trend Outlook Seminar held recently, Sun Xiaoyang, vice president of product engineering of Shanghai Hejian Industrial Software Group (hereinafter referred to as "Hejian Industrial Software"), said that as a provider of high-performance industrial software and solutions for independent innovation, Hejian Industrial Software takes the EDA field as the first breakthrough direction, and is committed to helping semiconductor chip companies solve the severe challenges and key problems faced in the process of innovation and development, and help accelerate the rise of domestic semiconductors.

Sun Xiaoyang, vice president of industrial and soft product engineering

High-end chip designs face huge challenges

Talking about the challenges faced by high-end chip design, Sun Xiaoyang pointed out that the scale of high-end chips is getting larger and larger, and with the improvement of process nodes, the design cost is also increasing exponentially; At the same time, architectural innovation has led to more complex design and verification requirements, and chip designs need to integrate more and more IP.

In addition to the design and verification of the chip itself, high-end chips also need the blessing of advanced packaging, which is expected to occupy half of the entire packaging market by 2025, but the complexity of packaging and PCB verification are also facing great challenges.

Another point is that the market window is getting shorter and shorter, and manufacturers are always affected by the relationship between supply and demand, and the market uncertainty increases.

Starting from the verification link, the Hejian industrial software solution should be born from time to time

From the perspective of the current market pain points, verification is the biggest challenge in chip development, which runs through the whole process of chip design and development, and the improvement of verification efficiency, predictability, quality assurance, and diversified needs should be considered in the verification process.

Sun Xiaoyang introduced that Hejian Gongsoft has made a comprehensive layout from chip design verification to EDA, to system-level packaging design, and then to the application level.

At the chip level, Hejian has created a commercial-grade digital verification process, covering digital simulation, debugging, verification efficiency improvement, prototype verification, hardware simulation, virtual prototype, formal verification and related rich solutions. At the system level, build a commercial-grade electronic system design environment, covering multi-faceted solutions such as PCB design, packaging design, 2.5D&3D advanced packaging collaborative design, electronic design data and process management. In cloud computing, artificial intelligence, 5G, intelligent manufacturing and other application fields, it provides low-code and collaborative management solutions.

In the most important verification EDA link, the core engine of Hejian Gongsoft includes different verification tools and products such as Simulation, Formal, FPGA prototyping, and hardware accelerator.

In order to cope with the challenges of high-end chips in verification, Hejian Gongsoft provides users with all-round and efficient assurance in terms of verification efficiency, predictability, quality assurance, and diversified needs based on the full-scenario digital verification system driven by verification tasks, starting from the core verification engine of software and hardware, to verification management and debugging positioning, as well as perfect verification solutions.

It is worth mentioning that Hejian Gongsoft has also worked with Empyrean to build a joint solution for digital-analog hybrid design and simulation EDA. Based on UniVista Simulator, a commercial-grade high-efficiency digital verification and simulation solution with independent intellectual property rights, and Empyrean ALPS, a high-speed and high-precision parallel transistor-level circuit simulation tool with independent intellectual property rights of Empyrean, we have created a complete digital-analog hybrid design simulation solution and helped Chinese chip design enterprises solve the challenges of digital-analog hybrid simulation.

In addition to tools, today's chips make extensive use of IP. In May this year, Hejian Gongsoft acquired Beijing Nuori Integrated Circuit Design Co., Ltd., which can provide PCIe controllers for Ethernet in terms of controllers, and DDR and other solutions in terms of memory.

Sun Xiaoyang said that although Hejian Gongsoft has not been established for a long time, its strong R&D capabilities and perfect platform-based mechanism support capabilities have been recognized by customers. In the future, Hejian will continue to innovate at the chip, system and application levels, and he also looks forward to more talents joining this industry to jointly promote domestic EDA to a broader future.