July 3, 2008 - The overall market for electronic design automation (EDA) declined 1.2% in 1Q08 to about $1.35B from a year ago but was up 5.9% sequentially, and the IC physical design/verification sector showed mix results, according to data from the EDA Consortium.

IC design/verification, the second largest slice of total EDA (~24% of the market, behind CAE's ~40%), saw sales decrease 9.1% year-on-year in 1Q to $325M, though the four-quarter moving average (comparing the most recent four quarters vs. the same four quarters a year ago) rose 6.7%, better than the overall market. "Weakness in the large EDA companies was partly offset by strength in startups, with resulting numbers that were slightly down year over year," said EDA Consortium chairman Wally Rhines, who also serves as Mentor Graphics' top exec. He cited main areas of strength in ESL design, design-for-manufacturing (DFM) and design-for-test (DFT), IC layout verification, IC/ASIC power analysis, and RF/ mixed-signal design.

Printed circuit board and multichip module revenues also decreased Y-Y in 1Q08 (-1.4% to $131.1M), and were also down vs. the four-month moving average (-4.7%). Semiconductor IP sales increased both Y-Y (1.7%) and via the moving average (1.2%).

By region, top purchaser North America suffered an 8.2% decline in 1Q08 to $271.4M, with the four-month average down slightly (0.8%). Western Europe enjoyed the best quarterly growth vs. a year ago (13.5%, to $268.7M), while Rest-of-World saw the four-month average rise almost 20%.