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What is Cloud Scalability For Chip Design Workloads

By Gurbir Singh, Group Director, Cloud Engineering

Table of Contents

Cloud Scalability Benefits for Chip Design
Synopsys Cloud and Cloud Scalability
Synopsys, EDA, and the Cloud

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Chip designers can't always predict how much computing power their projects will need. With cloud scalability, you can easily adapt a system to changing requirements. In addition to cutting costs and boosting efficiency, scalability can also increase productivity.

Cloud scalability is the ability to scale IT resources up or down to meet changing demands. Scalability is an essential component of the cloud and has helped lead to its growing popularity in recent years.

Before we examine the benefits of cloud scalability for chip design workloads, let’s first explore the types of scalability in the cloud.

Vertical scaling allows you to scale your existing servers up or down. Vertical scaling is possible without changing code. You can simply increase your virtual server's resources or memory rather than buying new servers to meet your business's growing needs.
Horizontal scaling (also called scaling out/in) enables you to increase the number of virtual servers to meet demand. You can easily add instances instead of moving to a larger instance size. While horizontal scaling allows you to handle increased traffic, it can be more complex to implement than vertical scaling.
Diagonal scaling refers to a combination of vertical and horizontal scaling. With diagonal scaling, you add capacity to a single server before replicating the server and expanding horizontally.

Cloud Scalability Benefits for Chip Design

As it relates to chip design workloads, cloud scalability has the following benefits: flexibility, cost-efficiency, ease of use, and disaster recovery.

Flexibility

In chip design, computing demand varies cyclically and unpredictably. Transitioning chip design workloads to a cloud environment offers near-immediate access to enormous computing and storage resources.

Let’s take an organization performing static timing analysis or physical verification. This organization can quickly activate as many machines as they need with automated provisioning and straightforward user interfaces operated by the cloud provider. Charges stop once the organization returns the resources to the cloud.

Cost-Efficiency

With the on-premises model, capacity and demand are chronically mismatched. As a result, engineers and servers sit idle for much of the design cycle. This inactivity reduces productivity, delays product launches, and costs money. With cloud scalability, you can minimize waste by paying only for what you use.

Ease of Use

Increasing or decreasing capacity to meet variable chip design demand simply requires a few clicks from IT administrators. The simplicity saves IT staff precious time. You also won’t need to waste money installing additional physical hardware.

Disaster Recovery

With cloud scalability, disaster recovery costs decrease since there is no need for secondary data centers. Chip designers benefit because the cloud protects valuable data and IP. It also prevents a full shutdown should a disaster disrupt on-premises equipment.

Synopsys Cloud and Cloud Scalability

If you want to leverage the cloud to its full potential, it is important to manage resources correctly from the start. You'll want to ensure you have the correct resources for chip design projects.

Using Synopsys' cloud-based chip design solutions, you can scale your infrastructure securely to increase productivity and improve innovation. Using a single-source, pay-as-you-go electronic design automation (EDA) deployment model, we provide unparalleled design flexibility.

Synopsys, EDA, and the Cloud

Synopsys is the industry’s largest provider of electronic design automation (EDA) technology used in the design and verification of semiconductor devices, or chips. With Synopsys Cloud, we’re taking EDA to new heights, combining the availability of advanced compute and storage infrastructure with unlimited access to EDA software licenses on-demand so you can focus on what you do best – designing chips, faster. Delivering cloud-native EDA tools and pre-optimized hardware platforms, an extremely flexible business model, and a modern customer experience, Synopsys has reimagined the future of chip design on the cloud, without disrupting proven workflows.

Take a Test Drive!

Synopsys technology drives innovations that change how people work and play using high-performance silicon chips. Let Synopsys power your innovation journey with cloud-based EDA tools. Sign up to try Synopsys Cloud for free!

About The Author

Gurbir Singh is group director, Cloud Engineering, at Synopsys. He has a demonstrated history of leadership in the software industry. In his current role, he leads the development of the Synopsys Cloud product, which enables customers to do chip design on the cloud using EDA-as-a-Service (SaaS) as well as flexible pay-per-use models. Gurbir has run organizations to develop cloud SaaS products, machine learning applications, AI/ML platforms, enterprise web applications, and high-end customer applications. He is experienced in building world- class technology teams. Gurbir has a master’s degree in computer science, along with patents and contributions to publications.