Synopsys to Acquire Synplicity

I had missed the news of Synopsys to Acquire Synplicity, Inc. until Aart de Geus mentioned it in his SNUG keynote speech.

Sounds like Synopsys is pretty interested in Synplicity for the "rapid prototyping" capability to check out ASICs before taping them out. The price wasn't too high, either.

I sat with a couple of FPGA designers at SNUG lunch and they spoke highly of Synplicity's FPGA synthesis -- definitely superior to what one can get through the FPGA vendor. With better quality of results from Synplicity, designers may fit their design into a smaller FPGA part, which saves big bucks in production.

Low Power Sessions at SNUG 2008

I was at SNUG, the Synopsys Users' Group, for the past three days. It was an excellent and very practical conference, as always. I will post more of a trip report soon, but one of the big themes was Low Power Design and Verification. Synopsys' low-power point man and blogger, Godwin Maben, even gave a general session (keynote) speech on it.

Godwin has kindly compiled and linked to the list of low-power papers at this year's SNUG, which you can see in his blog post Magic Blue Smoke � Blog Archive � Low Power Sessions at SNUG 2008. Note that you must be a Synopsys customer (SolvNet login) to see the papers.

The Future is Multi-Threaded

Richard Goering's article Synopsys pledges multicore support for EDA applications covers the current state and future claims for multi-threaded EDA products. Synopsys has made a big announcement about a multicore initiative, and Richard also notes the vendors (mostly startups) who are already offering such products.

I hope that Synopsys isn't just blowing smoke and will deliver multi-threaded applications in 2008. I'm no software engineer, but I thought it would be pretty difficult to retrofit multi-threading in these gargantuan EDA products, some of which have been around for many years.

We really need multi-threaded applications. Most servers have multiple CPUs with multiple cores each, yet are limited by memory as to how many EDA processes can run at a time. Often, you can only run one job because you need all the memory on the server to synthesize or place & route that design. Multi-threading should deliver greatly accelerated performance as those other idle cores contribute to the job at hand.

Some of the terminology gets confusing. In this article, "multi-threaded" and "multicore" are seemingly interchangeable. And then there is "distributed processing". I think of multicore as describing the hardware (CPU), and multi-threaded as describing the software architecture that includes shared memory access. And "distributed" means running on different physical servers, with separate memory models. Do I got that right?

SNUG San Jose is Coming

The 2008 edition of SNUG (Synopsys Users Group) San Jose is coming March 31 - April 2, and registration is now open.

This is one of the most useful conferences if you use any Synopsys tools. The papers are very practical, and you can meet engineers who are doing real hands-on ASIC design. The Synopsys tutorial and product updates are very professionally done, and presented by their "star" CAEs who really know the products. The panels can be good, though they're usually not as spicy as the inter-company debates at DAC or the dog fights that John Cooley sets up.

Hope to see you there!

Aart de Geus Profiled in IEEE "The Institute"

The IEEE's monthly newspaper, The Institute, features Synopsys CEO Aart de Geus for its monthly "member profile". The article recognizes both his business accomplishments in founding Synopsys, and his significant community support, especially in the area of education. See Aart de Geus: At the Heart of High-Tech.

It's an Analog World, After All

Until new markets like DFM and ESL take off, the big EDA vendors are going after Cadence's Virtuoso franchise for Analog/Mixed Signal design. This has been a safe haven and cash cow for Cadence.

While I've caught mentions of Synopsys working on an analog design product, Magma has been the most forthcoming so far. Last week at MUSIC (Magma Users' Group meeting in San Jose), they announced

• Titan, an Analog design entry system. See Magma Introduces Titan -- First Platform to Combine Full-Chip, Mixed-Signal, Analysis and Verification for IC Design and a video interview Cooley does Rajeev on his new Titan.
• Acquisition of Sabio, an Analog "process migration" tool. See the press release Magma Acquires Sabio Labs, Enhances Titan Mixed-Signal Design Platform.

Titan  is at first glance a "me too" product, though attractive if it offers better integration, performance, and pricing. Sabio has a lot of grand claims from Magma -- if they deliver, this technology could be very valuable to customers.

HD-DVD is Dead. How about Dueling EDA Standards?

As anyone following consumer electronics knows, the nascent high-definitition DVD market was held back by dueling standards: HD-DVD, backed by Toshiba/Microsoft, and BlueRay, backed by Sony and many movie studies. Microsoft XBox 360 had an HD-DVD option, and Sony PlayStation 3 had built-in BlueRay capability.

This unfortunate situation harkens back to the old "Beta vs. VHS" VCR format fiasco. Sony lost that battle, but in the case of BlueRay, they've come out on top. Nearly all studios and retailers have announced support for BlueRay instead of HD-DVD, and it looks like the industry will finally be able to focus on who can produce the best products at the best prices.

What does this have to do with EDA? Unfortunately, our industry is also plagued by dueling standards, and by companies jealously protecting de facto standards. In the beginning, there was Verilog, which Cadence refused to open up, spawning many man-years of duplicated work in VHDL. It happened again with Synopsys' .lib format. When Synopsys refused to open that up that standard, the industry spent a bunch of time on a competing OLA/ALF standard. Finally, Synopsys opened up "Liberty" and we can focus on who has the best tools, with library access for all.

In the present day, we still haven't learned! I hope for a quick and orderly consolidation of

• Advanced timing modeling: CCS (Synopsys) vs. ECSM (Cadence)
• Low Power Constraints: UPF (Synopsys) vs. CPF (Cadence)
• Though I'm not a Verification guy, it sounds like the same thing is happening with VMM (Synopsys) vs. OVM (Cadence/Mentor)

Come on, big vendors! For the sake of the your customers and to have a dynamic, innovative industry, tear down those walls!

Synopsys Doesn't See a Slowdown, Either

Similar to Magma's earnings report for this quarter, Synopsys doesn't report seeing a slowdown in their business. This has been much on analysts' minds, and the subject of pointed questions in conference calls since Cadence's disappointing report. Aart de Geus, Synopsys CEO, said "we project that EDA will grow and we will gain market share in 2008, all under our very stable business model." For more, see the earnings announcement and conference call transcript below.

• Synopsys 1st-qtr profit nearly doubles; shares up
• Synopsys F1Q08 Earnings Call Transcript

That's Innovation!

EDN's 18th Annual Innovation Awards Finalists - EDN lists the nominees for the 18th Annual EDN Innovation Awards. It's a quick way to see "what's hot" in a diverse number of fields, which happens to include EDA (in two categories).

What do you think about the finalists? Are the most innovative products that you would pick on the list?

What is PDF's Solution?

I don't want this blog to become "watching the EDA train wreck", but what is happening to the industry recently? Sramana Mitra's blog alerted me to PDF Solutions in her post PDF Offers Value, Finds Scaling Difficult - Sramana Mitra on Strategy.

The stock has dropped to an all-time low:

Sramana is suggesting that PDF has real value add and that the company should be an attractive acquisition candidate to a major EDA vendor. I do agree, DFY/DFM products that really work have a tangible benefit on chip companies' bottom lines. It's easier to appreciate and quantify DFM than that other great hope of EDA, "ESL".

One drawback is if the customer base is just foundries (like TSMC) and IP providers (like ARM Holdings), then the number of customers is not very large. Many fabless semiconductor companies won't need a big investement in DFM, at least not until such tools move up into the design implementation process.

Profile of ATopTech, P&R Upstart

ATopTech is an EDA startup with a goofy name but a hot P&R product, according to rumors on John Cooley's DeepChip site. Does the Industry Need Another P&R System? is an interview with Eric Thune, the VP of Sales & Marketing at ATopTech. He describes a lot of technical features of the tool, and makes specific claims of where they are better than the competition.

The technology just sounds mind-boggling. I'm sure there are other EDA systems with such impressive algorithms, but to see all the capabilities enumerated and to try to imagine how to do it all -- why it makes my head spin as "just another Perl hacker". A couple of quotes that impressed me: "If you look at many of the members of our team, you see that this is their third commercial place and route system that they have built. They know all about the challenges and the mistakes that have been made." and "The feedback from our customers is that our R&D has done a phenomenal job on customer request. They turn those around quickly. With some of the big guys, they do not see a release for six months. Our customers are asking for things and seeing them in days or weeks."

Normally I don't like the extra-long interviews posted on EDA Cafe, but this interview is worthwhile if you're interested in "what's hot" in IC implementation.

Sramana Crunches EDA

I blogged an alert about Cadence's troubled guidance in CDNS, Like a Rock, and now, respected business blogger and journalist Sramana Mitra has weighed in with an in-depth analysis at Cadence Crashes. Now What?.

As I've commented to her before, I like her "big picture" financial perspective on the EDA industry, but as an engineer, I feel she gives too little weight to the strength of each company's technology. She argues that the big guys will win in the long run because of their ability to deal.

EDA Slowdown? What Slowdown?

Coming one week after Cadence announced a weak outlook and the stock cratered, we have Rajeev Madhavan, Magma founder and CEO, telling investors

[Regarding] the economy and its impact on our industry and our customers: We do not believe the economy is having a significant impact on our business. Our customers continue to invest in Magma tools because they provide the most productivity. Magma grows by taking market share and does not rely on overall EDA industry growth. We continue to provide new products that expand our total available market and as long as these products increase customer productivity, Magma will continue to take market share.

-- Magma F3Q08 (Qtr End 12/31/07) Earnings Call Transcript - Seeking Alpha

Ouch, talk about kicking your competitors when they're down! As you can see by this chart, LAVA has outperformed its major competitors and the general market over the last year, though in today's market, that means they've only produced a 3.6% gain.

Prestigious Turing Award presented for Model Checking

Dr. Dobb's Journal: 2007 Turing Award Winners Announced gives details on the recipient of the annual Turing Award, one of the most prestigious awards in Computer Science. It's nice to see an EDA field being so recognized-- I've always admired the complexity of EDA problems and the intellectual power harnessed to solve them.

My impression is that Model Checking is still a nascent field of EDA, yet these guys invented it way back in the early 1980s! Talk about a long gestation period.

Has their work directly gone into any current-day EDA tools? Is there a rightful heir to this seminal innovation?

ULTRA Low-Voltage Design Reported

Energy-efficient Microchip Could Result In Cell Phones Staying Charged 10 Times As Long, Self-charging Electronics describes a design done by MIT and TI researchers showing operation at 0.3 volts. It includes several interesting features, such as

• On-chip DC converter to reduce voltage
• Designed to minimize manufacturing variation
• 0.3 volt operation at Idle mode, which implies Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS).
• Memory uses an eight-transistor bit cell, which improves retention at low voltage.

Lowering voltage is actually the standard for lowering system power," said Dean McCarron [President of Mercury Research]. "The challenge is that when voltage gets to a certain level, generally around 0.8 to 0.9 volts, making the chip work becomes more difficult. You know, 0.9 was thought to be the floor, and these guys have broken through the floor.

The researchers are describing their work in a paper presented at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. See also this Computerworld article.

CDNS, Like a Rock

The Market has really hammered some tech stocks (SPWR and VMW come to mind) this year, and today is Cadence's turn. Shares are down 32% today, after last evening's earnings announcement.

It's the "usual" story of decent historical financial results (Earnings meeting expectations, Sales a bit short), but the dreaded "weak guidance" for the future.

I'll be looking for the conference call transcript to see if the poor outlook is blamed on a weak overall economy or semiconductor industry, or if it seems to be particular to Cadence or certain product lines.

Update: Management's Earnings Conference Call Remarks are here. There's no specific information about company or product weakness. Rather, it says

As a result of our discussions with customers in Q4, and our assessment of an increasingly aggressive pricing environment that we have not seen during the past few years, we believe it is prudent to plan our 2008 business conservatively.
...
The current environment is more uncertain and the value discussions are longer and are harder than in the past several years. However, our strategy is intact, our technology has never been stronger, and we are dedicated to preserve the value of the solutions we are providing to customers.

Sounds like it's those darn stingy customers causing the problem. :-)

All-time Most Influential Technologists

Intel ... assembled a panel of experts including academics, journalists and independent third parties to vote on technology's 45 most influential people: HEXUS.net - Headline :: Intel lists its 45 most influential technologists : Page - 1/1

This is really an esteemed list. Tim Berners-Lee deserves a Nobel prize for the impact that the Web has had, and will have, on the world. I wouldn't put the founders of Google so high, though. Isn't Google just the search engine du jour? If this list was made a few years ago, would the founders of Yahoo or even (shudder) Netscape or AOL have been listed?

Who else doesn't belong? Who else is missing?

Check out the comments below the article for Wikipedia links to biographies.

Best Technology Business Blogs

Recommended Blogroll: Good Technology Business Blogs - Sramana Mitra on Strategy

This is Sramana's list of favorite blogs in this field with her descriptions. Worth a look, especially given that she is a published Forbes magazine author!

2008 Technology Winners and Losers

No, I am not talking about tech stocks! Please, let's not talk stocks so far in 2008. :-(

Instead, I refer you to IEEE Spectrum magazine's list of "winning" and "losing" technologies.

For chip geeks, a particularly good one is The Ultimate Dielectric Is...Nothing, highlighting IBM's research to create a vaccuum between chip interconnect. Not only is the technology very cool, but I'm really impressed by the writing in this article. The author is able to explain things like photolithography and crosstalk in layman's terms. Take a look; it's a nice piece of work.

I am so impressed by the cutting edge semiconductor R&D done at IBM and Intel. They are constantly pushing the envelope and competing very ably with giant foundries like TSMC. It's surprising that these tech heavyweights don't do more COT (foundry) business. I wonder if it's a lack of ability to set up the business and customer service, or a lack of desire, i.e., that they have more profitable things to do with their fabs.

An Industry Giant Departs

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is happening this week, with lots of big announcements for all us tech developers and consumers.

On the personal side, this is the last CES where Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and CEO, gave the Keynote address. Here's a video about his last working day at Microsoft.
Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip