SAN JOSE, Oct. 4 -- EDA revenue rose 4% in the June quarter versus one year ago, reaching $993 million, the EDA Consortium said today. The rise wasn't enough to convince one chief executive of a leading EDA company that the industry was performing up to par, however.

"Despite very modest growth in the EDA industry, there are no indications of overall strength," Wally Rhines, chairman of the EDA Consortium and chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics, in a statement. "Growth in services versus last year is positive but the sequential decline is not."

For the quarter, computer-aided engineering revenues were $474 million, up 4% year-on-year. License and maintenance grew 2% year-on-year. Services was up 11% to $70 million. IC physical design and verification sales fell $3 million, to $282 million.

PCB and MCM layout revenues were $84 million, down 1% from Q2 2003.

The semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) revenue rose 28%, to $84 million. The sector was helped by greater SIP participation in EDAC's data collection.

Revenues in North America and Europe increased 4% each, to $523 million and $180 million, respectively. Japan was down 5%, to $176 million. Rest-of-world, which includes China and India, was up 19%, to $115 million.

The sector employed 20,000 in Q2, up 6% vs. a year ago and a new high since EDAC began tracking employment data four years ago.