( ESNUG 323 Item 14 ) --------------------------------------------- [7/22/99]
From: [ Made In Taiwan ]
Subject: Chinese Avanti/Mentor/Cadence User Experiences & Their View Of DAC
Hi, John.
I have been reading ESNUG for probably 1 - 3 years here in Taiwan. I
remembered once I wrote about AMBIT but long time ago. This time I am
writing some DAC related thoughts. Just thoughts.
(1) Distributors who Sell Tools and Being Messengers
For DAC'99, even people in Taiwan like me, heard of Magma and
Monterey. Not really from the EE Times. We heard them from
distributors. EDA tool distributors in Taiwan are eyes/ears/mouths
of us. Big brothers like Cadence, Synopsys, Avanti, Mentor have
their offices here but other EDA companies afford to have only
distributors. Our complaints, our money, go through these
distributors. And that's why they live. :-)
Every year, they go DAC and try to bring hot tools back Taiwan and
if EDA guys thought they should have Taiwan market, they qualify
a distributor and then hold some Mini-DAC here. (Simplex just had
their Mini-DAC by their distributor last week)
Lots of design houses are booming out here continuingly. We've got
foundries like TSMC, UMC so that's natural to have design houses
standing by feeding their wafers.
But very few articles mentioned these distributors. I believe there
are lots of non-US visitors in DAC but I found nothing about them.
And I strongly believe there are some stories that interest other
ESNUG readers or EE Times readers. We have EE Times, Taiwan here
and I was one of the interpretors that help translating English
articles to Chinese and then published on EE Times Taiwan. They got
some articles from our point of views published and if they can be
published back in English EE Times, that would be good. At lease
let people know we are here. :-)
(2) IC == Indians and Chinese
And that's what people used to name the IC industry now. Most EDA
companies that listened to us are funded by Chinese. Sad but
interesting. Ultima listens and adds features for us. NOVAS did
it too. And these 2 companies have almost every design house being
their customers. Avanti listens so their Apollo have over 80%
market over Cadence in Taiwan.
Most of EDA companies don't even listen to us.
That is another good topic to be focused on when doing DAC review.
There must be something driving the 'IC' phenomenon. I don't
believe that's because hiring a Chinese is cheaper. :-)
(When I said this, I wish you don't have racial prejudice. ... )
(3) Back to the Physical Part
We used Avanti Apollo and its clock tree is bad. OK, now they got
Apollo II and have better performance on CTS. But wait, that feature
cost you another. Avanti delivered a bad product and now when they
fix it up they asked for more money ??? I would rather asked for a
refund for that BAD CTS option they gave me for months. :-(
Mentor is back on road again with their Calibre and they really
listen what we need. They are hacking their codes for integrating
Calibre-STAR-RC. Again, the back annotation problem. That reminds
me of some good old days. Avanti tried to tie us with their
APOLLO+Hercules+STAR_RC. And they might lose their customers in
this way. Nobody wants to be tied and who says they will be the
top always ??
Please keep me anonymous.
- [ Made In Taiwan ]
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