Siemens & Co. may offer EDA tools in China again

The USA and China are moving closer together again on the subject of chip production. The world's three most important providers of design automation tools for chip production are once again allowed to provide their software to Chinese companies. These are Siemens EDA, Cadence and Synopsys.

Their tools for electronic design automation (EDA) form the basic framework for many companies to design their own chips such as processors or controllers. Because they are at least partially developed in the USA, the US government has control over where they are used.

The industry leaders use uniform standards, which chip contract manufacturers such as TSMC and Samsung also rely on. Companies can purchase logic blocks, such as entire CPU cores or memory controllers, assemble all the parts and submit the finished design to a chip contract manufacturer – all using the same EDA tools.

Latest dispute settled after months

The latest escalation between the US and China lasted several months: In April, China temporarily stopped exporting rare earths to the rest of the world. In response, the US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) banned cooperation between EDA tool providers and Chinese companies.

At the end of June, China reopened the export of rare earths under new framework conditions. This has now been followed by the easing of restrictions on Siemens EDA, Cadence and Synopsys. However, they are still not officially allowed to work with individual sanctioned companies such as Huawei.

For the development of its latest processors with 7-nanometer technology, Huawei is to rely on less common Chinese EDA tools.

The share prices of Cadence and Synopsys rose by four to six percent after the announcement. Siemens' stock went up by about two percent – the company is less dependent on the EDA business than its rivals.

(mma)