( DAC 00 Item 38 ) --------------------------------------------- [ 7/13/00 ]
Subject: Relative Customer Rankings Of The 10 Physical Synthesis Tools
RELATIVE RANKINGS: Last year 77 engineers responded to my DAC trip survey
and I did the a physical keyword count. This year I had 113 engineers reply
and again, I did a similar keyword count. And yes I accounted for things
like "Magma", "BlastFusion", "Magma BlastFusion", "Blast Chip", and "Blast
Fusion" each being only one reference -- or that "PhysOpt", "Physical
Compiler", "PhysComp", and "PC" (when it all meant "PhysOpt") as all being
one reference to "Physical Compiler" -- and the survey questions themselves
were eliminated, too. Here's the data:
1999 2000
---- ----
Magma 'Blast Fusion' 103 67
Synopsys 'Physical Compiler' 15 55
Monterey 'Dolphin' 22 21
Cadence PKS or Nano 26 15
Mentor 'TeraPlace' N/A 13
Silicon Perspective 'First Encounter' 3 10
Aristo 'IC Wizard' 2 8
Tera Systems 'TeraForm' 5 3
Sapphire 'FormIT/NoiseIT/PowerIT' 3 3
Avanti 'Jupiter/Saturn' 48 2
I was so surprised by these initial survey numbers, I sent out the exact
same survey a second time to be sure. Last year, Avanti's Jupiter was
mentioned 48 times (I didn't do a keyword search on Saturn last year);
this year, Jupiter was mentioned just twice and no one mentioned Saturn!
Another surprise was how *less* people mentioned PKS or Nano (15) compared
to last year's 26 references. And that PKS/Nano 15 was dwarfed relative to
Magma (67) and Synopsys PhysOpt (55). PKS was very close the very new
Mentor TeraPlace tool (13) in customer mindshare. Whoa!
Overall, Magma did take the show (67) this year at DAC as expected, but
Synopsys PhyOpt seems to be keeping close on their heels (55) as compared to
the 7X marketing advantage Magma had at DAC last year (103 vs. 15).
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