China Unveils Home-Grown Software Tools For Semiconductor Chip Design To Reduce Reliance On Foreign Firms Amid US Sanctions Threat

A subsidiary of Chinese semiconductor equipment maker SiCarrier has launched two domestically developed electronic design automation software products today (15 October), marking a significant step in China's drive towards technology self-reliance.

Qiyunfang, the SiCarrier unit, released the tools—one for schematic capture and another for printed circuit board design—at the three-day WeSemiBay Semiconductor Ecosystem Expo 2025 in Shenzhen.

The new EDA products feature fully independent intellectual property rights and are compatible with a wide range of domestic operating systems, databases and middleware platforms.

The software has already been adopted by more than 20,000 engineers, underscoring growing domestic Chinese demand for home-grown chip design tools.

EDA software is crucial for designing blueprints of sophisticated semiconductors, a market currently dominated by foreign suppliers Cadence Design Systems, Synopsys and Siemens EDA.

SiCarrier, which is backed by the Shenzhen municipal government and works closely with Huawei Technologies, was founded in 2021 and has gained prominence in China's semiconductor sector amid Beijing's push for self-sufficiency in critical technologies.

The company was placed on the US export control list in December 2024 over its reported links to Huawei, which has publicly denied any formal affiliation with the equipment maker.

The software launch comes as US President Donald Trump threatened to impose export controls on critical software and an additional 100 per cent tariff on Chinese imports.

Earlier this year, the US temporarily imposed restrictions on exports to China for chip design software developers in response to China's export suspension of rare earths and related magnets.

Analysts had warned that long-term US restrictions on EDA software could severely hinder China's chip design industry, which remains behind the US in this area of development.

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