( BSNUG 00 Item 2 ) ------------------------------------------- [ 10/13/00 ]
Subject: The Bigwig's Big Speech
WHAT WAS NOT SAID: As usual, the Boston SNUG keynote was given by the CEO
of Synopsys, Aart De Geus. Afterwards, as usual, Aart was at customer
cocktail party. Everyday Synopsys users love this aspect of SNUGs because
they get to connect *directly* to the Head Honcho of the company. (Many
software company execs, once their company hits the big time, tend to become
very aloof to their average everyday user -- usually stupidly rationing
their face time only for the management of their biggest customers.) The
big news at this keynote address wasn't in what Aart said as much as what
he *didn't* talk about...
"Aart said nothing about SystemC. Isn't this his baby?"
- an anon engineer
"Thursday Morning I attended the keynote speech of Art de Geus. His
talk centered on the following top 5 issues:
1) Timing Closure
2) Functional Verification
3) IP reuse
4) Signal Integrity
5) Test vector generation/flows
SystemC and C synthesis was not mentioned. Timing closure is the big
issue. At .18 um and below, interconnect delay is 70-80% of the total
delay, the gate delay is small. Physical Compiler has been used by
NVidia for 750K gates / 245K instances. PhysOpt has over 20 tapeouts.
For verification, Linux farms seems to be taking off, with all Synopsys
verification tools running on Linux. Verification is 70% of the
project and growing.
As far as test vectors, Synopsys is starting to work w/ Test Companies
to deliver complete solutions. They already own 95% of the test vector
market with Tetramax and other tools.
Some statistics on Synopsys, 3000 employees, #1 in product revenue and
customer satisfaction. 20-25% of revenue goes back in R&D, this is in
the top 3 of all companies, not just EDA. Total revenue last year was
$806 Million. They are moving to about 75% time based licenses from
the traditional permanent licenses to help smooth their cash flow."
- Tim Wilson of Intel
"Keynote Address:
Aart de Geus, Chairman and CEO, gave the usual address describing the
EDA roadmap and where Synopsys sits. He also gave a Wall Street
explanation for the recent switch to time based licensing. Some
interesting technical tidbits:
o Synopsys Professional Services is presently doing RTL to GDSII.
o PrimeTime is now in beta with crosstalk analysis capability
o plans to integrate signal integrity capability into Physical
Compiler
o Synopsys is working with various tester companies to further
bolster their test offerings.
Nothing on SystemC."
- Bob Wiegand of NxtWave
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