> On August 12 [2022], the US Commerce Department announced a multilateral export control on certain EDA tools, blocking China and over 150 other countries—essentially any country that isn’t a traditional US ally—from accessing them without specially granted licenses ... how has the industry become so American-centric, and why can’t China just develop its own alternative software?
The fabs are using the EDA companies the same way PC manufacturers used Microsoft in the 1990s. There is only really one company for each particular piece of the EDA toolchain -- Cadence and Synopsys don't really compete directly now that they've run everybody else out of business (or bought them up). "Using" here is in the symbiotic sense.
I think Siemens deserves to be on the list but your main point remains. They all really excel at one step or another in the EDA chain. Even they do compete generally across the all broad scopes it sometimes feels like it is not a serious effort. Sometime I wonder which is cause and which is effect, is the reason some fabs simply don't provide PDK support for all options with each company because the tools are lacking or are the tools lacking because the fab does not want to provide support.
Why is that?