( SNUG 99 Item 14 ) ----------------------------------------------- [3/31/99]
WALLY'S FOLLY: For quite a few years within the test community, Mentor's
Fast Scan and Flex test tools have been known as the best in their class.
When Test Compiler first came out, it was a dog with too many bugs to be
useful. (Even on the personal side, TC had some tough times with the R&D
manager dying from brain cancer and another R&D person later commiting
suicide.) Instead of capitalizing on this ideal situation to completely
dominate the test market, Mentor now only owns 27 percent of the market
compared to Synopsys owning 51 percent (from the 1997 Dataquest numbers;
it's rumored the 1998 numbers are 55 to 60 percent market share.) To make
matters worst for Wally, Synopsys bought Sunrise (grabing that market
share and partial scan technology) plus Test Compiler and DC Expert are
now debugged, robust, fully functional tools.
"The present opportunities are not to be neglected; they rarely
visit us twice."
- French philosopher and wit, Francois Arouet Voltaire, 1694-1778
"Mentor's Fast Scan and Flex test tools, in my experience, seem to
need less support than the Sunrise tools. Online documentation and
tool maturity with some of the larger chips has made these tool quite
a bit robust and easy to use. My experience with Mentor's tools is
limited. But I certainly like to use them and they do a good job."
- Shankar Hemmady of Guru Technologies in ESNUG 300
"Right now Synopsys scan insertion and ATPG works at the gate level.
They're working on tools that will automatically fix testability
problems at the RTL level with no gates needed."
- Anon
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