Xinhua Zhang received more than 200 million yuan in Series A financing to develop a smarter EDA 2.0

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Titanium Media reported on December 9th that EDA (Electronic Design Automation) intelligent software and verification system company Xinhuazhang announced today that it has completed a round of financing of more than 200 million yuan, led by Gaorong Capital, and Wuyuan Capital (formerly Morningside Capital) and Shanghai Yuhan participated in the investment, and the company's existing shareholders continued to follow suit in this round.

Xinhuazhang was established in March 2020. The company's founder, chairman and CEO Wang Libin originally served as the deputy general manager of the EDA giant Synopsys (Synopsys) China. The company is committed to the development, production, sales and technical services of a new generation of EDA intelligent software and systems, helping the development of integrated circuits, 5G, artificial intelligence, cloud services, and supercomputing, and providing partners with independent research and development, safe and reliable Chip industry solutions and services.

This round of financing will be mainly used to attract and encourage global R&D talents and cross-border R&D talents, and to support the company's comprehensive deployment of EDA 2.0 technology research and product development.

Counting this round, Xinhuazhang completed three rounds of financing at the level of 100 million yuan within two months.

  • On October 16, after receiving government guidance funds, Xinhuazhang announced the completion of a pre-A round of financing of 100 million yuan, led by Yunhui Capital, and Dashu Evergreen and Zhen Fund participated in the investment;

  • On November 9, Xinhuazhang completed another nearly 100 million yuan of Pre-A+ round of financing, led by Hillhouse Ventures, SMIC and Songhe Capital participated in the investment, and Yunhui Capital and Dashu Evergreen continued to invest.

EDA is the key technology of integrated circuit industry innovation, the indispensable core industrial software for designing and manufacturing chips, and the core technology that is in urgent need of independent innovation in the current domestic integrated circuit industry chain. The demand for chips has surged with the advent of the digital economy. The total output value of the integrated circuit industry in 2025 is conservatively estimated to exceed 2 trillion yuan. Therefore, China's EDA market has great room for development.

Realize chip verification with innovative EDA software and system architecture

EDA tools can be divided into three parts: front-end, back-end, and verification.

The front-end design of the chip includes the formulation and detailed design of chip specifications, HDL coding, simulation verification, logic synthesis, static timing analysis (SAT) and formal verification; and the back-end design includes design for test (DFT) , FloorPlan, Clock Tree Synthesis (CTS), Routing (Place & Route), Parasitic parameter extraction and physical verification of layout, etc.

But it should be noted that the above-mentioned main tools are currently in the hands of the three major overseas EDA software vendors (Synopsys, Cadence, and Mentor Graphics).

In 2019, the global EDA software market is about 10.3 billion U.S. dollars. The global market share of the three major overseas EDA software vendors exceeds 64%, and the market share in China exceeds 85%.

In fact, because the chip design process is extremely complex, to develop sophisticated industrial-grade software such as EDA, the team must have compound talents who are proficient in microelectronics and computers, but also involve knowledge of mathematics and physics. It also requires core R&D members to have long-term development. , Experience in polishing products.

In an interview with Titanium Media App, Wang Libin said that in terms of intelligent EDA, domestic EDA and the Big Three are on the same starting line. He believes that long-term innovation is difficult under the monopoly of the Big Three, while domestic EDA companies are in a state of "light equipment" and it is "completely possible" to surpass the world's giants.

"The product we are working on is called Smart Verification. This is a new standard. In fact, we developed it simultaneously with these giants. These technologies did not exist before, and the standards did not exist before. Now such a new technology has emerged, Now everyone is working on the same starting line, and we also have very strong strength." Wang Libin told the Titanium Media App.

The business scenario involved in the Xinhua chapter is the chip verification link with the highest EDA technology density and the highest demand. The official website shows that the verification products of Xinhuazhang will include: hardware simulator, FPGA prototype verification, intelligent verification, formal verification and logic simulation products and platforms.

Wang Libin said that the company's goal is to break through existing technical barriers and create a full-process EDA verification tool and system.

In August of this year, Xinhuazhang announced the launch of the open source EDA ecological project. In September, it launched the first open source EDA technology community in China-EDAgit.com. In November, Xinhuazhang announced the launch of new verification technologies and products, including the high-performance multifunctional programmable adaptation solution "EpicElf" (EpicElf), and the first domestic new simulation technology to support domestic computer architecture.

Wang Libin said in November that the verified EDA products and technologies released by the Xinhua Zhang have been verified on domestic Feiteng servers, which are compatible with the current industrial ecology and will help support the next generation of computer architecture in the future. It is to build China's independent research and development. An important milestone in the integrated circuit industry ecology.

"The advantage of the Xinhua chapter is that the team can use a new path to develop and innovate EDA based on classic verification experience and technology, and integrate the latest artificial intelligence based on the current most advanced software engineering methodology and high-performance hardware architecture. , Machine learning, cloud computing and other cutting-edge technologies, design new software system architectures and algorithms, and create a new generation of EDA software and systems facing the future."


The Big Three executives join Xinhua Zhang to better control technical risks

In terms of talents, although the Xinhua Zhang has been established for a short time, the core members are all from international leading EDA, integrated circuit design, software and artificial intelligence companies. Cadence's former R&D vice president, Dr. Lin Caiqin, joined Xinhua Zhang as the chief scientist on August 3. YT Lin, who once led the team to create EDA products at Cadence and Synopsys, joined Xinhua Zhang on August 31 as the vice president of R&D.

"Mature teams can avoid many previous bottlenecks. They know the core of this frontier technology and the development of the EDA industry." Wang Libin said.

In addition, legal issues in the field of EDA IP intellectual property are also very important.

Since there are hundreds of types of IC design software, the IP authorization, patent and layout design of most traditional EDA tools are in the hands of the big three overseas EDA, while the domestic is basically a cross-licensing method.

In this regard, Wang Libin told the Titanium Media App that the protection of intellectual property rights is very important. The company team is constantly training to ensure that the core R&D personnel have self-developed technical minds. In addition, Xinhua Zhang also has specialized lawyers and legal counsel in the United States to do a good job of management and control, long-arm jurisdiction and other tasks. At the sales and market level, the company is constantly iterating and updating, and the management level has legal concepts, so that it can better control risks.

The Titanium Media App learned that Xinhua Zhang is uniting well-known universities at home and abroad and EDA experts and scholars with rich R&D experience to jointly create "X-Action" and cooperate to customize the EDA engineer training course system for the new generation of R&D talents to promote It reserves and develops its own and domestic EDA talents; and cooperates with industrial chain partners to achieve technological breakthroughs through selected ecological projects.

Xinhua Zhang said that the company is deploying the more intelligent EDA 2.0 developed by the company. Using software and hardware EDA frameworks and algorithms, integrating cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud technology, lowers the design threshold of System-on-Chip (SoC), shortens product development cycles, and supports the rapid development of the digital economy era . (This article first published Titanium Media App, author | Lin Zhijia, editor | Zhao Yuhang)

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