( SNUG 99 Item 6 ) ----------------------------------------------- [3/31/99]

   "We saw a real need for HW/SW co-design.  We had the Mentor Seamless
    and Synopsys Eaglei guys come in to pitch their tools.  As a test,
    we set up two teams in house using both tools.  Each team consisted
    of two HW engineers and one SW engineer.  For a few weeks, they used
    either Eaglei or Seamless to develope a PowerPC based testbench.  We
    then had each team switch to using the other tool.  In the end, the
    two tools were very close but our conclusion was to choose Mentor
    Seamless because it was more mature, it allowed granular and dynamic
    optimization control of memories, they had working Denali memory
    models (Synopsys MemPro was yet unworkable), and it ran on HPUX
    (Eaglei only runs on Suns and we're a HP house.)  Price was a
    non-issue because they were so close."

       - Hugh Blair of Honeywell Space Systems