( SNUG 03 Item 24 ) ---------------------------------------------- [05/14/03]
Subject: Those Cheesy Synopsys Galaxy & Verification "Platforms"
SELLING FAHRFUGNUGEN: My bullshit detectors went off, too, when I heard
how Synopsys marketing was trying to pass off the natural acquisition task
of making all their tools work together as the special Galaxy Platform.
Buwahahaha! Don't get me wrong. Love the idea of everything working
together on Milkyway. We're just not buying that it's something "special"
they're doing. It's like a car salesman telling you his car is extra
special because the car they're selling has wheels, a motor, and doors.
Oh, please. And on the business side, there's some customer concern about
Synopsys using Galaxy and their many other Platform "initiatives" as a slick
way to lock out 3rd party tools from a Synopsys flow. Gotta watch that.
"This is EDA Marketing hype. Synopsys and Avanti tools should be
talking to each other by default. Galaxy is just Synopsys marketing
making a feature out of a weakness."
- Gregg Shimokura of STMicroelectronics
"May be hype, but it's not as much hype as the Verification Platform."
- Curtis Jones of Hewlett-Packard
"Sounds like the Platform B.S. they've got. Their marketing people have
too much free time on their hands."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"The thing I fear from Synopsys and their VCS offerings is that they'll
offer us superior verification but at a high price as they encapsulate
everything they can w/o providing an open interface. If this happens
one will have to buy even more Synopsys tools as they will be the only
ones able to integrate with the core tool set (ala Microsoft)."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"I think this will be something worthwhile in 2004. There are too many
tool acquisition issues to deal with by the big 3 players to actually
make a shot at a real 'platform' this year. I think the main thing it
will do is drive Cadence/Mentor/Magma to build platforms. At least the
customers will now know what the 'plan' is from the players; something
they are missing now."
- Pallab Chatterjee of SiliconMap
"Mostly marketing. I'm sure their R&D people have been asking for this
from a long time ago, but only now, when Cadence is starting to gain
momentum because of their openAccess initiative, Synopsys realizes that
in today's market only open solutions (or what looks like an open
solution) have a future."
- Santiago Fernandez-Gomez of Pixim, Inc.
"It sounds like the typical marketing hype."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"Right now, it seems to be EDA marketing hype."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"Marketing hype, to compete with the Cadence FE integrated environment.
But the industry has tried various integrated frameworks in the past,
and ultimately strips them down, or abandons them. Both Cadence and
Synopsys also need to watch out for various anti-trust issues around
these integrated frameworks."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"Great initiative! We have seen the benefits of the Milkyway uniform
database. It will be great if the frontend tools shared the same
Milkyway database. "DB" files are starting to grow a bit too old and
don't support parasitics, netlists, etc."
- Roberto Landrau of Mitre
"Galaxy does have the promise of a better environment, but holes remain.
I think Floorplan Compiler is one big area of improvement, to put it
mildly. I had a hard time locating an FPC representative at the San
Jose SNUG's Galaxy 'display table'. This tool, properly improved and
stabilized, could be the 'central-black-hole' for the Synopsys Galaxy.
Problem is, the way its going, FPC could turn into a brown dwarf and
burn itself out!"
- Neel Das of Corrent Corp.
"Marketing hype. We are still going to have the same problems moving
data from one platform to another. There's always some new features."
- Bengt-Erik Embretsen of Zarlink Semiconductor
"Don't know yet how Galaxy affects us and our vendor."
- Lance Flake of Maxtor
"Repackage the old and resell it as new. Has Synopsys marketing been
getting its new hires from Cadence marketing?"
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"Time will tell. If Galaxy can avoid some of the translation
steps/problems, that would be great."
- Bob Lawrence of Agere Systems
"Very wise, a chance to become Microsoft in EDA market."
- Tie Li of Applause Technolgy
"All marketing hype until we actually see the rubber hit the road."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"Is this a monopoly scheme? Maybe I missunderstood them."
- John Zhang of Broadcom
"Marketing hype."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"The ideas for these initiatives are all good. Whether they become
reality is another question. I will withheld any comments on it now."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"I think this is quite a big hype from Synopsys as usual."
- Amit Sanghani of Nvidia
"It will be great if there could be one unified database which would
work with all tools. However, then would we end up with Windows XP?"
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"Everything is hype until it has been proven to be useful. I think the
idea is good -- pretty much a counter to the Si2/Open Source/Cadence
Genesis path, but both of these things rely on third parties being
willing to 'play in your pool' and giving up on customizing/optimizing
their own database environment."
- Terry Lowe of IBM Microelectronics
"A side note: I'm sure you've seen Synopsys' new marketing tag line:
'We measure success one chip at a time.'
It's on their home page. Doesn't this strike you as a little
un-original? As I recall that's the same basic line that one of
the investment firms used in their TV spots a while back:
'We measure success one investor at a time.'
Can't remember who it was. Dean Witter, I think. Kind of silly.
You'd think Synopsys marketing could come up with something better."
- Kris Monsen of Mobilygen
|
|
