Cadence Reaches Out

Much has been written in recent weeks about Cadence's surprise bid for Mentor Graphics and subsequent abandonment of the deal. It's not the proudest time in the EDA industry. Happening in the meantime, garnering less publicity, are two promising initiatives that Cadence is taking to reach out to customers.

• CDNLive! Silicon Valley 2008 is the Cadence Users' annual conference in San Jose, a la Synopsys SNUG. It's worth checking out if you're a Cadence user. I haven't gone regularly but plan to attend this year. I hope to see you there.
• Cadence Community is a newly designed web community with blogs, white papers, etc. It looks much better than their prior site, and I'm hopeful that it will attract a critical mass of knowledgable users. The previous site tended to have too many off-the-wall or newbie questions to have a useful signal/noise ratio.

Cadence withdraws proposal to buy Mentor Graphics

Breaking news: Cadence withdraws proposal to buy Mentor Graphics - San Jose Mercury News.

Is this related to Cadence could find it tough to raise debt for bid? (Thanks to Daniel Payne for sharing the link through Plaxo.)

An Investor's View of Top Semiconductor Stocks

Sramana has a concise summary of her take on big semi companies and their prospects at Top 10 Semiconductor Stocks - Sramana Mitra on Strategy.

Agree or not, she has a pretty good handle on technology and business and presents her case clearly. It's a good starting point to form your opinions.

Dilbert on Management

It's tempting to comment, but I'll let Dilbert speak for itself. I apologize if the formatting is messed up in the blog. Click on the strip to see it at Dilbert's site.