( ESNUG 394 Item 1 ) --------------------------------------------- [05/29/02]
Subject: ( SNUG 02 #15 ) Texas Instruments (Not TI ASIC) Invested In Magma
> Magma made the 'over 100 tape-outs' claim at the big press event they had
> 2 weeks ago. I called them on it and they said 50 of them were from TI.
> That kind of surprized me because I know that at least TI Dallas
> Broadband, TI Phoenix MSP, TI Houston DSP, TI India, TI France, and TI
> Japan Wireless are firm PhysOpt users -- not Magma users. It turns out
> that the only group I could find that's using Magma was TI ASIC.
>
> This complicated things because TI ASIC is an early Magma investor. It
> means they're under internal pressure to show that the investment in Magma
> was wise. That 50 could be real or political...
From: Milan Lazich <milan.lazich@Magma-DA.COM>
John,
In your SNUG Trip Report you used some incorrect facts to reach an erroneous
conclusion that impugns our tape-out number and a customer. Writing what
you did leaves a wrong impression with your readers. "TI ASIC" never made
an investment in Magma -- Texas Instruments did. So "TI ASIC" had no
greater incentive to use Magma than any other group within TI. And I
imagine NO group within TI could be influenced to use products from an EDA
vendor for any reason other than it helped them get their jobs done.
Can we please get something in your next posting to correct this?
As you well know, many companies make strategic investments in early-stage
companies such as Magma was, typically as a mechanism to gain insight into
the company. My understanding is that Sun made such an investment in
Synopsys at one time. It's not an uncommon practice.
Ironically, it's likely that much of the FUD being spread at that time via
comments posted to "DeepChip" and "ESNUG" contributed to the early interest
in investing in Magma -- so in an indirect way you may have assisted with
this, and for that we should probably thank you.
- Milan Lazich
Corporate Marketing
Magma Design Automation
|
|
