> For how many developers? Chip design companies aren't paying Synopsys $250k/year per developer. Even when using formal tools which are ludicrously expensive, developers can share licenses.
That actually probably is per developer. You might be able to reassign a seat to another developer, but that's still arguably one seat per user.
I don't think so. The company I worked for until recently had around 200 licenses for our main simulator - at that rate it would cost $50m/year, but our total run rate (including all salaries and EDA licenses) was only about $15m/year.
They're super opaque about pricing but I don't think it's that expensive. Apparently formal tools are way more expensive than simulation though (which makes sense), so we only had a handful of those licenses.
I managed to find a real price that someone posted:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FPGA/comments/c8z1x9/modelsim_and_q...
> Questa Prime licenses for ~$30000 USD.
That sounds way more realistic, and I guess you get decent volume discounts if you want 200 licenses.