Why, oh why? Browser is a crappy environment and its unsuitable for any kind of bigger application. It's too bloated and too constrained. Google is barely able to make WordPad equivalent run in the browser - I don't see any actually usable EDA as a browser solution any time soon.
If you thought Encounter was slow, wait until you see the browser version!
I've actually been in an EDA startup. The problem is that changing the toolchain is percieved to increase design risk, and you have to overcome the usual problem that the people paying for "enterprise" software aren't the users. It's quite hard to make headway in this environment.
Please no. That's exactly the type of suggestion I would expect to see a startup looking to do things "differently" to get attention, without bringing any really value to the overall system.
Agreed that Synopsys/Cadence tools are severely outdated and terrible.
They need to be rewritten from scratch and designed by actual UX/UI designers for the front end. Their backend algorithms are already state of the art for the most part (e.g. Place and route and simulation).
A huge hurdle in making a Virtuoso or Encounter replacement is that foundries are not going to work with you because they already have such deep relationships with Cadence/Synopsys. It's an extremely nontrivial task to get that up and running.
That being said, someone should re-invent the antiquated world of EDA, electronic design automation software, the software that you can use to design chips.
Several major problems of Cadence/Synopsis....
* No Forking of designs(not easily) * Min Cost is too high. --Should be browser based solution. * Version Control is lacking in chip design teams today.
It's hard to get single digit cost licenses for chip design.