True, fines should be significantly higher for corporate malfeasance. Give them a $1 billion fine and they will start to consider but maybe they should change their behavior.
martin-t · 20m ago
Maybe fines should have two components, one determined by the harm caused, the other by the offender's tolerance to the penalty.
akersten · 56m ago
So what's the secret sauce that cadence is not allowed to sell to personas non gratas? The article just says EDA tools but that's so broad. Is KiCAD export restricted?
triactual · 46m ago
If you read the article, you will see that the technology is specifically semiconductor design tools required for developing high performance computing that the PRC would use for nuclear weapons development. Can you do that with KiCAD? No.
The parent's question still seems applicable. Is this basically down to a judge to decide the line at which a certain technology is too advanced to export? Would open sourcing an EDA tool be illegal if it was sufficiently capable?
akersten · 43m ago
> specifically semiconductor design tools required for developing high performance computing
I call that EDA for brevity
> Can you do that with KiCAD?
Yes, depending how you define "high performance computing" (my question here)
Cyph0n · 30m ago
Isn’t KiCAD limited to PCB design, or is my understanding out of date?
Cadence tooling is for end-to-end electronics design - from transistor/standard cell up to PCB.
So technically they’re both EDA tools, but one is in another league as far as sophistication goes.
AlotOfReading · 19m ago
People have hacked kicad into doing layout with the e.g. skywater 130 PDK. I wouldn't recommend it, but it's possible.
There's a whole lot more to an EDA tool than just layout or running spice though.
raverbashing · 1h ago
"Exporting?" Why is China not using an "unofficial" version? (Honest question)
alephnerd · 1h ago
EDA vendors know this is a risk, so EDA tools constantly need to "phone back home" to load updates and validate licenses. Plenty of functionality falls apart as well without that connectivity or support.
Furthermore, the resources that you would need to spend constantly cracking newer versions just isn't worth it when similar capital could be spent building home grown alternatives.
Finally, cracking and building a clone does cause liability risks for Chinese companies attempting to expand abroad. Companies are companies first - even in China - and the appetite for Huawei getting completely blocked from all of the EU, Singapore, SK, JP, India, etc where both the large EDA vendors and Chinese vendors coexist makes it a proposition that isn't worth it.
15155 · 38m ago
> Furthermore, the resources that you would need to spend constantly cracking newer versions just isn't worth it when similar capital could be spent building home grown alternatives.
Zero of these programs have any level of copy protection remotely resembling Denuvo: no virtualization, debug symbols are commonly left intact.
alephnerd · 30m ago
You don't need gaming style DRM like Denuvo to make it a pain. Logic Programming is hard, and bug fixes are constant - especially for anything 14nm and lower. A cracked EDA or PDK becomes useless fairly quickly if not constantly updated.
And the name of the game that's happening now is offering EDAs only via SaaS - the removing a major vector for piracy.
$100B Cadence: it wasn't very effective
The parent's question still seems applicable. Is this basically down to a judge to decide the line at which a certain technology is too advanced to export? Would open sourcing an EDA tool be illegal if it was sufficiently capable?
I call that EDA for brevity
> Can you do that with KiCAD?
Yes, depending how you define "high performance computing" (my question here)
Cadence tooling is for end-to-end electronics design - from transistor/standard cell up to PCB.
So technically they’re both EDA tools, but one is in another league as far as sophistication goes.
There's a whole lot more to an EDA tool than just layout or running spice though.
Furthermore, the resources that you would need to spend constantly cracking newer versions just isn't worth it when similar capital could be spent building home grown alternatives.
Finally, cracking and building a clone does cause liability risks for Chinese companies attempting to expand abroad. Companies are companies first - even in China - and the appetite for Huawei getting completely blocked from all of the EU, Singapore, SK, JP, India, etc where both the large EDA vendors and Chinese vendors coexist makes it a proposition that isn't worth it.
Zero of these programs have any level of copy protection remotely resembling Denuvo: no virtualization, debug symbols are commonly left intact.
And the name of the game that's happening now is offering EDAs only via SaaS - the removing a major vector for piracy.