( ESNUG 287 Item 1 ) ---------------------------------------------- [4/30/98]
Subject: ( ESNUG 286 #1 ) Verilog, VHDL, NT, Unix & Ron Collett's Bad Advice
Hi John-
> Thought I'd pass along some thoughts after reading your article "From
> Beirut to Bosnia" posted on techweb.cmp.com as I was searching for
> references to Collett International (Ron Collett).
>
> Before coming to Systems Science, I worked for Zycad over 6 years. Ron
> was contracted and, as a stipulation, would speak to the company about his
> vision of the simulation-environment-of-the-future. Ron assuredly promoted
> the demise of Verilog in favor of the upcoming contender, VHDL. On that
> advice, Zycad's executives based the future of the company on a hardware
> engine (ViP) designed to digest raw VHDL in preparation to capture the VHDL
> market which was prophecized to take over by 1996. Because of this huge
> R&D investment, Zycad was fatally crippled and by the time they backtracked
> to update the successful gate-level simulator (Paradigm XP, Lightspeed),
> they had already lost momentum and could no longer invest in the resources
> necessary to regain lost ground.
>
> After my first experience hearing Ron's presentation, I was always
> very skeptical of his market analysis. In 1996, it hit directly in my
> realm when he avoided the VHDL-versus-Verilog topic and began to harp on
> the demise of the workstation platform in favor of NT.
>
> - Clay Degenhardt
> Systems Science
From: "Brian LaPorte" <Brian.LaPorte@xilinx.com>
John,
Regarding Clay Degenhardt's note on the demise of Zycad, which bet its
strategy on Ron Collett's advice: Any company that formulates its strategy
based on a market analyst's vision versus its customers' vision deserves
the fate it gets.
- Brian LaPorte
Xilinx
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From: "Gabe Moretti" <gmoretti@ingr.com>
John,
I take issue with some statements and conclusions offered by Clay Degenhardt
on ESNUG Post 286 with respect to the reasons for the demise of Zycad
through its ViP product. ViP was not the victim of a Verilog vs VHDL market
struggle, but of the following facts:
1) ViP was a very early exploration on "how to" and most importantly
"how not to" accelerate VHDL execution.
2) ViP's architecture was the antithesis of the KISS principle.
3) ViP machines were extremely difficult to use.
4) ViP machines never came close to provide a return on investment even
to die hard VHDL users.
Some of us like conflict: Verilog vs VHDL, UNIX vs NT. I prefer appropriate
cuddly coexistence. Economics determines the survivors (some would call
them winners).
- Gabe Moretti
Chair VHDL International
VP Engineering, VeriBest, Inc.
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From: plaberge@micronpc.com ( Paul LaBerge )
Hi John,
I'm in agreement with Clay's foresight in the following statement :
"The result is the current situation we're seeing of the hybrid environment:
A workgroup of users working on NT platforms with one or 2 Sun workstations
acting as servers for "serious work". " This is exactly the environment we
have setup at Micron. Of course being a PC company it's not without some
bias, but the PC platform and NT 4.0 has worked extremely well for us.
We've done 6 or so 200+ gate asics using ModelSIM and PC based tools. We
use workstations for Synopsys along with some other tasks (bfl compiler runs
on UNIX only). The mixed environment poses some process problems, but
we've successfully integrated the design environment to take advantage of
both platforms. It also allows us to use either platform quite easily.
It also allows our engineers to chose. Some are more comfortable using one
platform vs the other. I've also found out that it is just a preference in
many cases. To argue one plaform over the other tends to turn into a heated
debate at times. It's like almost like talking about religion or
politics :-) Each side offers arguments and opinions, but neither side
really changes their mind.
- Paul LaBerge
Micron
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