( ESNUG 340 Item 9 ) --------------------------------------------- [1/19/00]
Subject: ( ESNUG 339 #10 339 #11 ) Nine Mostly Positive VERA User Letters
> VERA's biggest rival, a language called "e" from an in-your-face Israeli
> start-up named "Verisity", is eating Synopsys' lunch in that market.
> According to Dataquest, in 1997, Verisity had 84% and VERA had 16% of that
> $7.5 million market. In 1998, after the world wide Synopsys marketing
> army had ownership of VERA, VERA grew to 19 percent of that now $13.5
> million market. It's been 18 months now. We won't have the 1999
> Dataquest numbers for another 9 months, but as the ESNUG moderator I know
> should have been seeing all sorts of customer e-mails about VERA by now.
From: "Faisal Haque" <faisal@growthnetworks.com>
John,
Your EE Times Vera Fiasco article is a classic example of why engineers
should leave market analysis to market analysts. I disagree with your
statement about Vera. We have been using Vera at GNI and almost all but
one networking company that I know of is using Vera.
I have been in the verification business for a few years. In fact at Bay
Networks/Nortel we originally chose to go with Verisity because it was the
only VHDL tool. I have been told that Bay and Nortel have decided to use
Vera instead of Verisity. This does not take anything away from Verisity.
They have a good product and it should do quite well. In fact their
biggest hindernace is their sales/marketing management IMHO (and I am
speaking from experience, rather than from conjecture.)
- Faisal Haque
Growth Networks, Inc. Mountain View, CA
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: "Larry Melling" <larry@ikos.com>
John,
I was very surprised by your article about Vera and it's failing market
position. Our experience at IKOS has been quite opposite of what you are
seeing. In fact we are currently working with Synopsys to integrate Vera
with both our accelerators and emulators, because of customer demand from
leading electronics companies like Infineon and Compaq to name two.
- Larry Melling
Vice President of Business Development
IKOS Systems Cupertino, CA
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: "Jay Salinger" <salinger@ironbridgenetworks.com>
Hey John,
I haven't seen you since the Mandela thing in Boston about 10 years ago. I
was forwarded a copy of your article about VERA so I thought I'd reply.
I work at IronBridge Networks and we use VERA. We like it. It was helpful
in allowing us to put together a decent DV platform quickly. It has its
limitations, but if you don't have a good DV to Designer ratio and need
something in a hurry, it sure beats rolling your own. Its combination of
Verilog constructs (like always @) and C++ (classes, object, etc) give you
Verilog flexibility with C++ power.
- Jay Salinger
IronBridge Networks
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
> "Brilliant" was the word that Dataquest analyst Gary Smith used. It was 18
> months ago and he was reacting to the news that Synopsys had just bought
> System Science for $26 million.
From: [ A Little Bird ]
John, keep my name out anything you may wish to print.
The price for VERA was over $50 million, not the $26 million EE Times
reported. I actually heard a figure of $54 million. What a deal!
This is from the Synopsys 10K.
In fiscal 1998, the Company acquired SSI and two small privately held
companies in the EDA industry. The acquisitions were accounted for as
purchases with the Company exchanging a combination of cash of $26.0 million
and notes of $12.0 million. In addition, the Company reserved approximately
318,000 shares of its common stock for issuance under SSI's stock option
plan, which the Company assumed in the acquisition. The total purchase
price of $51.3 million was allocated to the acquired assets and liabilities
based on their estimated fair values as of the date of the acquisition.
Approximately $33.1 million was allocated to in-process research and
development and other costs.
2000 (or more) seats of Vera are at SUN. SUN started the VERA development
then jettisoned the technology, Daniel Chapiro (and the other guy) got it
and ran (stumbled) with it. Other non-synopsys (Cadence, Mentor) field
contacts I know say they run into Veristy in sales engagements on a
frequent basis but not VERA. My take, Synopsys bought the cheaper company,
Vera, not the better tool, Verisity.
- [ A Little Bird ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
> In the 1999 Synopsys Customer Education schedule, there were 45 VHDL and
> 53 Verilog oriented classes pre-scheduled for 1999. Although it does
> mention a VERA class, zero VERA classes were pre-scheduled in 1999. Huh?
From: "Yatin Trivedi" <trivedi@seva.com>
Hi John,
You should look at the Synopsys 2000 Customer Education schedule. It has
40 Vera classes scheduled. Concerning the lack of Vera training you saw
in the 1999 Synopsys Customer Education schedule, since April 1999, I have
conducted 9 Vera training classes at the request of the Synopsys Educational
Division. I have also declined 4 classes because I do training only between
projects when I have some time on hand. Also, I am NOT one of the three
primary instructors employed by Synopsys. As far as I can tell, I get
request only after the three primary instructors are fully booked. Even if
each instructor does only 1 training a month, Synopsys must have done,
conservatively speaking, in excess of 30 trainings in 1999.
Considering my classes have at least 15 students, I have had interactions
with at least 125 engineers. Even if half were attending for evaluation
purposes, I must have taught more than 50 engrs that are current customers.
I don't get the information about who is paid attendee and who is comp, so
I can't possibly tell you that information. However, I can tell you that
when I see 3 or 4 engineers from the same company, it is beyond reasonable
doubt for me that their company is a customer. Of course, their questions
indicate that a few more of their colleagues have already started using
Vera in-house and they had the privilege of reading their code. From my
classes, I can tell you that I have seen at least 40 different companies,
15 of which fall in more-than-3-students category. Of my 9 classes, I did
4 at company sites.
One other quantitative point - as part of Seva, we were asked 4 times in the
first 6 months of 1999 by Vera customers for additional resources. We could
not provide resources in 3 cases because of prior commitments. In the
latter half of 1999, as part of Intrinsix, we did 3 projects that involved
Vera and had to walk away from 2 more. That's just in our Silicon Valley
Design Center. I don't keep track of the other 17 Design Centers of
Intrinsix around the country.
- Yatin Trivedi
Seva / Intrinsix Fremont, CA
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: "Chandresh Patel" <cpatel@caesium.com>
Dear John,
You wrote: "And when I read in that press release that Synopsys was claiming
that they had 5,000 VERA users, my bullshit detectors went off."
If this is 5,000 Vera *licenses*, it would be probably OK. There is a
difference between claiming a Vera user and Vera license. I & my colleague
here at CAESIUM have used Vera on a previous project, and are amongst 4
verification engineers. For regression purposes, the Vera license-to-user
ratio is not 1:1. It can easily range from 2:1 to 4:1 licenses:user.
Currently, my colleague is again working on another project where Vera is
being used.
More and more, C++ is becoming the choice for system level simulation
at some the projects we have recently worked on.
- Chandresh Patel
Caesium, Inc. Santa Clara, CA
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: Jon Stahl <jstahl@avici.com>
John,
It was interesting to see your latest article on Vera. We use it, and the
compelling reason was an ~5x price difference with w/respect to Verisity
(X 40 seats) -- although a secondary reason was our head of verification
came over from Sun (a big Vera house). I have also wondered at times why
there wasn't more discourse on ESNUG concerning Vera.
- Jon Stahl
Avici Systems N. Billerica, MA
Editor's Note: For the record, Compaq, MIPS, and ATI also wrote similar
letters supporting Vera. Also, for the record, I'm NOT disputing the
usefulness of Vera nor the fact that there are a number of companies
curious about it -- I'm disputing that there are *5,000* engineers
*using* Vera as Synopsys claimed in its Dec. 23rd press release. With
the www.deja.com data from ESNUG 339 #11 establishing a 9.4 percent to
27.1 percent Letter Rate for EDA tools, plus knowing there were 32 Vera
letters in 1999, I calculate there are from 118 to 340 Vera *users*.
( If .094X = 32, then X = 340, etc.) On Monday, I searched the large
jobs database on www.monster.com and found:
Number of Min. Number
EDA Keyword Jobs Offered of Users Job Rate
-------------- ------------ ----------- -------------
"Verilog" 520 19,207 .02707 OK...
"VHDL" 477 24,374 .01957 OK...
"Synopsys" 247 16,000 .01543 OK...
"VERA" 12 "5,000" .00024 Huh???
Job Rate = ( # of Jobs Offered / # of Users )
Again, Vera's Job Rate of .00024 is TWO orders of magnitude down for a
tool that supposedly has 5,000 *users*. Using the high Job Rate of
.02707 and the low Job Rate of .01543 for known EDA tools and doing the
algebra ( If .01543X = 12, then X = 778, etc.), I calculate there are
from 443 to 778 Vera users estimated by this technique.
Using Yatin's letter (i.e. he reports 3 full time Vera instructors) and
generously assuming each instructor teachs a new class of 15 users every
3 weeks plus the 125 Yatin taught, I get 3*18*15 + 125 = 935 Vera *users*
trained -- which is in the same order of magnitude as the 118, 340, 443,
and 778 users estimated by my prior methods. So, average the whole mess
and you get approximately 523 engineers *using* Vera -- not the 5,000
*users* Synopsys claimed in its Dec. 23rd 1999 press release.
Anyway, I'd like to move beyond this issue and encourage more detailed
*technical* user letters about Vera and/or Specman -- you know, bugs,
tips, gotchas, workarounds, scripts, etc...
- John Cooley
the ESNUG guy
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