Former Vice President of Sales of Synopsys China joined Qijie Technology, can the new CMO Qin Ming win the "strange"?

At present, EDA tools are the most dependent areas in the domestic semiconductor industry, and correspondingly, the call for independent and controllable demand is also the highest-pitched. Demand is the market, in the past two years, in the context of the increasingly complex international trade environment, more and more startups have poured into the EDA industry.

Unlike these start-up EDA companies, which were just established a year or two ago, Qijie Technology was founded in Hong Kong as early as 8 years ago in 2014 as a high-tech company focused on the front-end technology of electronic design automation (EDA). The company's start-up team includes professors and a number of doctoral graduates from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of the University of Chinese, Hong Kong, who have accumulated many years of technology in EDA, especially in the logic synthesis, logic function verification, logic function correction and other aspects of digital chip design, and have won the world championship of the CAD competition organized by ICCAD, the top conference in the field of EDA, for three consecutive years (2012, 2013, 2014).

For an enterprise to achieve rapid development, talent is undoubtedly an important part, which is also one of the business philosophies that Qijie Technology has been adhering to. Recently, the joining of Qin Ming, the CMO (Chief Market Strategy Officer) of the blockbuster coffee, has undoubtedly added a lot of color to the construction of the talent team of Qijie Technology.

Looking at Qin Ming's work history, it can be described as star-studded. He has been deeply involved in the EDA industry for nearly 30 years, with marketing strategic marketing experience of EDA giants at home and abroad, why would such an industry veteran choose Qijie Technology? What changes will his arrival bring to Qijie Technology? What is Qin Ming's interpretation of the future development of EasyECO, the commercialization tool of Qijie Technology, and the research and development ideas of other core technologies? In the in-depth exchange with the micro-network, Qin Ming answered one by one.

Qin Ming, Chief Market Strategy Officer of Qijie Technology

Joining Qijie Technology is due to personality and is more like-minded

Ming Qin, who graduated from Tsinghua University with an EMBA from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, worked at Mentor (now acquired by Siemens) for 6 years before joining Qijie Technology, and then joined Synopsys for more than 12 years, during which time he rose all the way to the position of Deputy General Manager in China. Subsequently, Qin Ming joined BGI Jiutian as the deputy general manager of the company, and led BGI Jiutian through the most difficult 6 years to achieve a leap in sales... Coincidentally, when Qin Ming joined the above companies, the companies were in their infancy, so he personally experienced the entire process of the top EDA companies at home and abroad from starting to growing and then to reaching the top of the industry. In the EDA industry for many years of practical experience, Yu Qinming, in any company is a rare wealth.

It is also true that on the road of his career, there are countless choices in front of Qin Ming. However, Qin Ming, who is about to come to the year of "Ear Shun", has always maintained the feeling of the domestic EDA industry. "I have worked in foreign companies, but there has always been a voice in my heart saying, 'I want to participate in the construction of domestic EDA software'. In recent years, the country has attached great importance to the EDA industry, and I hope to do my best, including joining BGI for nine days at that time. Qin Ming said.

In recent years, domestic EDA start-ups have sprung up. According to incomplete statistics from the microgrid, by the end of 2021, there are close to 30 large and small EDA companies in China. So, among so many enterprises, qin ming chose Qijie Technology based on what considerations?

Among them, Qin Ming's character of daring to step out of the comfort zone and liking to challenge has played a great role.

"After contacting the Qijie Technology team, I found that they are very enterprising. In the first few years of its establishment, Without much government subsidies, Qijie Technology was able to survive that hard time and insist on making good products, which relied on a strong belief in making excellent Chinese EDA software in our generation. "And it's pretty much like my character." As long as the right cause, even if it is hard, as long as it is valuable and meaningful, there will be happiness in suffering. ”

As an emerging force of domestic EDA, Qijie Technology is committed to becoming the brightest "star" in the "night" of EDA localization, and is willing to continue to work hard for it, which is in line with Qin Ming's ideal of creating independent and controllable domestic EDA software, so after communicating with the team of Qijie Technology, Qin Ming almost did not hesitate to express his willingness to join in.

Joining as a CMO, Qin Ming is mainly responsible for the marketing and sales team, and will help Qijie Technology continuously optimize market positioning, expand the market, and lead the team to achieve and break through sales targets in the future. "Looking ahead to the next few years, the annual sales performance will double again than the previous year, and it will not be a big problem." he said.

Qijie technology technology is solid, the team is stable, Qin Ming said, "this is like fighting, they are my logistics support." The team is stable and united, the technical reserves are very good, I don't need to have any worries, I can safely charge in front. This is one of the reasons why I am willing to join Qijie Technology. ”

Qijie Technology aims to further develop the Chinese mainland market, in line with this vision, the company is constantly growing the talent team. In 2021, Qijie Technology set up a subsidiary in Shenzhen, which has become a comprehensive center integrating R&D and sales, with more than 20 employees; in the first half of this year, Qijie Technology R&D Center has been established in Beijing, which will introduce a number of senior engineers in the industry. In terms of sales, Qijie Technology has been laid out in Shenzhen, Beijing, Hangzhou, and will set up sales centers in Shanghai, Xi'an, Wuhan and other cities in the future, thus forming a complete sales network.

The Functional ECO tool is eye-catching to locate the industry's weak points

If it is said that the feelings of wanting to do a good job in domestic EDA software, the spirit of the founding team and the personality charm are the "soft power" of Qijie Technology to attract Qin Ming, then the ECO tools that Qijie Technology cut into provides "hard power" for Qin Ming's choice.

Functional ECO (Engineering Change Order) refers to the local logic function change technology and application in the circuit design process. With the chip design more and more complex, the chip specification design and the final logic algorithm implementation will inevitably be different, even if the logic function has been designed and implemented in accordance with the specifications, there will be a need to constantly update and iterate; on the other hand, the simulation verification link can not cover 100% of the application scenarios, there is no bug in the chip design, the RTL code does not need to be modified at all, almost only in the ideal situation. Therefore, in the long chip design process, it is inevitable that the RTL code needs to be modified and the logic function needs to be changed. In traditional design methods, this situation often requires the redesign process to be re-completed from scratch, and as the chip design cycle becomes longer and longer, the cost of re-completing the complete design process from scratch becomes higher and higher. Especially if you have completed the key links such as layout and routing, delay convergence, etc., it may take months and cost a lot to restart the complete design process from scratch. In this case, the design companies had to think differently, so The Functional ECO became a key technical link in implementing logical function changes.

Functional ECO allows engineers to re-perform complete logic synthesis, test circuit insertion, layout routing, timing closure, etc., but to make small changes and add a small patch directly in a part of the current circuit, so that the changed circuit logic function is equivalent to the modified RTL code logic function. The entire Functional ECO process can take only a few days, and a successful Functional ECO can save weeks or even months of R&D time, as well as tens of millions of re-tape-out costs.

Qin Ming mentioned: "Almost all digital chip design work has ECO requirements, and this happens to be a weak link in the current EDA software. At present, the international giants have been doing this for more than a decade, but the effect is still less than expected. ”

It is understood that although there are already some commercial ECO tools on the market that are trying to solve this problem, their degree of automation is limited and the quality is not stable enough, so the market acceptance is not high. At present, the majority of chip design companies still generally use manual ECO correction methods, and Qijie Technology is the only mature and commercial company in the domestic and foreign markets to provide automated FunctioningAL ECO tools.

Therefore, when talking to the QIJIE team about the ECO tool, Qin Ming's eyes lit up, "This tool is too well chosen!" ”

"The founding team of Qijie Technology is very smart, does not blindly choose products, and the product positioning is very accurate. And this is also one of the reasons why I chose them, not only with people, but also with their products and strategies. Qin Ming deeply recognized the strategy of Qijie Technology.

Qijie Technology has been honing for many years and has launched a new automated FunctionicAL ECO tool with more advanced algorithms, EasyECO. According to Qin Ming, EasyECO can perform ECO operations in multiple stages such as synthesis, layout and routing, layout design, and even after tape-out, and will consider factors such as the scan chain and clock tree at the same time. The most advanced process of 5nm is already supported. EasyECO can reduce the number of patches by an average of 30% compared to similar tools.

Therefore, Qin Ming also mentioned that with the blessing of advanced algorithms and product concepts, qijie technology does not have any fear of competing with international competitors. "Qijie Technology is now equivalent to playing a ring match with foreign EDA manufacturers. The customer takes two identical computers, identical designs, and then runs the design with both the rival and our software to see whose results are smaller and take less time. ”

"The biggest advantage of easyECO tools is the algorithm, and its algorithm can be said to be the most advanced at present. After testing, the customer found that some of the performance of our software was even better than that of our competitors by an order of magnitude. There are even features that only EasyECO can do. Therefore, customers basically do not hesitate when they buy. "Qin Ming is very confident in Qijie Technology's ECO tools.

Practice has proved that EasyECO can significantly shorten the product development cycle of IC design companies and save costs. The data shows that EasyECO is compared with another tool on the market today, due to the originality and high degree of automation of the core algorithm, the performance and resolution rate can be improved by more than 30% on average, and the optimal can even reach more than ten times, and the running time has also been greatly shortened.

International giants monopolize How do domestic EDA companies "break the ice"?

However, there is still an insurmountable practical problem in front of the domestic EDA industry: for a long time, China's EDA market has been monopolized by cadence, Synopsys, Siemens EDA three major international giants, the overall market share of the three accounts for more than 70%, and domestic EDA suppliers currently account for a small market share, and the overall strength is weak.

"The EDA industry has high maturity requirements for software, your tools need to be directly compared with industry giants, in the face of mature and powerful opponents, the cruelty of this market or the business rules lie in whether you are a domestic or national independent brand, this is secondary, the most important thing is that the quality of the tool must be excellent, which has the possibility of opening the market." Qin Ming, who has been in the industry for many years, looks at the EDA industry this way.

At the same time, Qin Ming pointed out: "It also needs to be recognized that in fact, the EDA industry is a relatively limited market. After all, it is a limited market of toB, and the base is certainly not as large as the consumer market. Although a number of design companies emerge every year in the country, the EDA industry has the characteristics of high technology and high talent threshold, so the number is also limited. ”

It is also true that although EDA is classified as a semiconductor technology juxtaposed with manufacturing and materials, from the perspective of market value, global semiconductor sales have exceeded $500 billion in 2021, while the global market size of the entire EDA software is only about $10 billion.

In addition, for domestic EDA companies, they are also facing a dilemma of "chicken or egg first": for many companies that have used foreign software for a long time, they dare not easily try domestic software.

According to years of experience, Qin Ming concluded that the biggest feature of EDA software is "not afraid of customers, afraid of customers not to use". "Tools can only be more mature if they are used more and more. The more bugs that customers encounter in the early stage, the faster we can solve them, the more mature the software, and the more customers will use them. ”

Contrary to the situation that domestic software does not dare to try easily, foreign software has undergone thousands of hammers and hammers after years of development, and when it enters the Chinese market, it has long become very mature. Qin Ming said, "There is a word in our industry called golden tool, which means that this software tool is so good that there are almost no bugs. If the domestic EDA software tool wants to develop and grow, the process of fixing bugs cannot be escaped! ”

To sum up, domestic EDA companies are currently facing strong opponents and picky markets, how can they break through? This is the test that all domestic EDA companies need to face head-on, and it is also the only way for them to grow.

"If you don't understand the law of market development, if you don't use your heart to tap market opportunities, it is difficult for domestic EDA companies to achieve a breakthrough." Qin Ming recalled that in his previous work, he also faced the dilemma of not being able to open the market situation. For example, at that time, he and his team discovered the emerging market of LCD panels and successfully ported software tools to LED flat panel designs. To avoid competition, quickly win the advantages of the blue ocean market, with the follow-up tools continue to follow up, the formation of an absolute leading position in the LED market, and finally smoothly lead the product to achieve the transformation from R & D-led to marketization.

He believes that there is no shortcut to Qijie Technology, "Individuals and companies are actually the same, there is a growth curve, through the initial difficult stage to be able to jump to the second stage, in order to open a bigger gap with competitors." ”

So, how can domestic EDA small companies "break the ice" in the above context? Qin Ming said that Qijie Technology has given the answer: on the one hand, from the technical breakthrough, open a new situation; on the other hand, the market is developing, the demand is also changing, small companies should grasp this change in time; in addition, compared with international giants, the advantage of small companies is that the role transformation is fast, strong execution, so small companies should also give full play to their advantages and strengthen technology accumulation, only in this way can they seize the opportunity when it comes.

The good news is that Qijie Technology has made progress in stages, and its EasyECO tool has more than a dozen formal commercial paying customers, including Samsung, a top IC design company in South Korea, a number of listed companies in Taiwan, and more than Chinese mainland well-known IC design companies, and has been widely praised and strongly recommended by engineers.

In the future, Qin Ming also hopes to selflessly share his experience with the Qijie Technology team to help them grow and drive Qijie Technology to complete the transformation from R&D-oriented to market-oriented professional management. "It is said that 'ten years to sharpen a sword', I think Qijie Technology has been sharpened, the industry's well-known companies are using ECO tools is enough to prove that this software is good enough to use, the effect to meet customer expectations, so the future of the company's focus is on how to expand business, improve customer satisfaction."

In the face of the wave of localization of integrated circuits and the emergence of many domestic EDA enterprises in this process, Qin Ming believes that this is a good thing for the development of the domestic EDA industry, indicating that the country's emphasis on the industry has caused a positive response from the industry, only in this way can the domestic EDA industry be truly developed in the future.

However, Qin Ming also reminded that domestic EDA companies must have real materials in order to gain a foothold in the commercial jungle. "I am very confident that in a few years there will be Qijie Technology that will still survive in the industry."

Wei Xing, founder and CEO of Qijie Technology, said:

"Qin is always a rare talent in the EDA industry, and his joining will bring great help to Qijie Technology to build a more complete product system and expand a broader market." Qijie Technology will also maintain cooperation with peers in upstream and downstream industries, gain a firm foothold in the entire digital EDA ecosystem, and make a contribution to the construction of a whole-process domestic EDA. ”

At present, Qijie Technology is in the process of A2 round of financing, the pre-investment valuation is tens of millions of dollars, welcome to interested investors to contact.