( DAC 99 Item 20 ) ----------------------------------------------- [6/25/99]

    "The  drawbacks to their 'new' Avant! Nova-RTL linter are so many that
     I felt a sense of outrage about who would be stupid enough to buy this
     tool.  A license is required even for people who have opened the GUI
     and are entering their RTL code.  Thus, you are 'encouraged' to buy
     enough seats to support your entire design staff.  There is no
     batch-mode version available although it should be out 'soon' as well.
     The scorecard might be attractive for managers who like to micromanage
     their staff, but I fail to see how real users would really benefit
     from it since they can easily turn off any checks that they want to
     make the picture 'pretty'.  The list price is $35k/seat which is way
     overpriced for what this tool provides.  Using a text editor, a
     Verilog lint checker and/or purifier, and our own scanchek tool
     provides an equivalent capability to this overpriced fluff."

         - an anon engineer