IBM Cloud Global

Cloud Global

Our mission is to provide clients with an online user community of industry peers and IBM experts, to exchange tips and tricks, best practices, and product knowledge. We hope the information you find here helps you maximize the value of your IBM Cloud solutions.

 View Only

How Cadence Accelerates EDA Workflows with IBM Cloud

By Stephanie Wing posted 2 days ago

  

Designing advanced chips is more complex than ever—with AI, 3D IC packaging, and custom silicon driving up compute demands. For developers working in electronic design automation (EDA), the need for scalable, high-performance infrastructure is real—and immediate.

Cadence, a global leader in EDA software, tackled this challenge by partnering with IBM Cloud to build a hybrid, developer-friendly HPC environment. This setup enables fast, secure, and elastic compute for everything from logic simulation to full-chip tapeouts.

Key Technical Challenges

Cadence’s 10,000 engineers run millions of jobs per month. They needed:

  • Elastic compute capacity during peak demand

  • Low-latency, high-throughput storage for I/O-heavy workloads

  • Seamless job orchestration across on-prem and cloud

The IBM Cloud Solution

The Cadence–IBM solution is a blend of powerful compute, software-defined storage, and workload orchestration, tuned specifically for the EDA lifecycle—from front-end RTL development to back-end physical verification and packaging.

Cadence’s cloud stack includes:

  • IBM Cloud Bare Metal & Virtual Servers for flexible, high-performance compute

  • IBM Spectrum® LSF® for cross-environment job scheduling

  • IBM Storage Scale for high-throughput, software-defined file storage

  • IBM Aspera® for fast, secure data transfer

  • Red Hat® OpenShift® for containerizing and moving Unix-based EDA tools

Security is baked in, with full logging, encryption, and compliance tooling for IP-sensitive workloads.

What Engineers Gain

  • Faster runs: Offload simulations, synthesis, and verification to cloud instantly

  • Better I/O performance: Avoid storage bottlenecks during peak compute

  • No infra delays: Cloud bursting in minutes, not months

  • EDA-as-a-Service: External customers use Cadence OnCloud for turnkey chip design

One Cadence customer shaved 2 months off their chip timeline by moving to the cloud. This isn't just a cloud story. It’s a developer productivity story backed by flexible, high-performance infrastructure built for the real-world complexity of EDA.

The Future: AI + Infinite Elasticity

Generative AI is fueling the next wave of design productivity. As LLMs and ML-driven tooling enter the EDA pipeline, Cadence and IBM Cloud provide the elastic backbone needed to power it—all without slowing devs down.

"IBM Cloud truly understands hybrid networking and the challenges of the EDA industry." - Tarak Ray, CIO, Cadence 

Read the case study to learn more.

0 comments
7 views

Permalink

https://community.ibm.com/community/user/blogs/stephanie-wing1/2025/08/07/how-cadence-accelerates-eda-workflows-with-ibm-clo