( ESNUG 467 Item 11 ) ------------------------------------------- [07/26/07]
From: Mike Dini <mdini=user domain=dinigroup bot calm>
Subject: Mike Dini eviscerates Synplicity for its recent Hardi acquisition
Hi, John,
It is about time I comment on Synplicity's acquisition of Hardi. We were
not contacted about the possible sale and not considered. What had been a
very close relationship, starting nearly 15 years ago as Ken and Alisa
worked out of their house, is now dead. Synplicity has thrown us under the
bus. The combination of Synplicity/Hardi is now a direct competitor. I'm
having a hard time imagining what they were thinking. This acquisition
nukes any possible relationship as a potential partner, with us or anybody
else. I do not intend to be a "compartnitor" (competitor/partner) to
Synplicity/Hardi. I consider the concept, in practical business use, to be
laughably silly -- akin to one of those management buzzwords that show up
on the bingo cards. (See Buzzword Bingo).
I think I understand the financial reasons, but the intangibles here do not
speak well for the future of Synplicity. It is clear that the core business
of Synplicity, FPGA synthesis (Synplify Pro), is in deep trouble; saturated,
therefore stagnant, and likely shrinking.
A review of Synplicity Financials over the last three years explains much.
Worse, in the Tier 1 FPGA accounts (Xilinx/Altera), the Synplicity synthesis
products compete against tools that work quite well and are FREE. To
satisfy institutional investors, Synplicity needed to expand the bottom line
and hide this declining revenue.
FPGA hardware to help sell their software looked like an exciting & rapidly
growing market. So they jumped in acquiring Hardi, consequences-be-damned.
This acquisition creates direct competitors out of their oldest, best, and
closest allies/customers and permanently terminates the 'Partner Program'.
I expect ample lip service from Synplicity's PR/marketing people about how
they intend to 'continue supporting third party hardware'. In practice, the
sparse amount of engineering resources for products such as Certify will be
dedicated, almost entirely, to Hardi HW with third party support handled as
a distant afterthought.
Strategic thinking of this sort is a classic case of concentrating on short-
term gain while ignoring disastrous long-term consequences. Ultimately this
action will be judged for what it is: a desperate act.
We were caught flatfooted and are evaluating other options to Synplicity's
tools. Since it is unlikely we will have access to Synplicity's tools in
the future, we are in the process of converting our reference designs to
alternates. This doesn't prevent you, as a user of our products, from using
Synplicity's tools; it only affects our ability to support you when you trip
over Synplicity's bugs.
For Xilinx synthesis, we are converting to XST, a FREE synthesis tool Xilinx
provides with ISE Foundation. We are finding that XST works fine, even in
large/dense V5 LX330 applications. If we find instances where XST is not up
to the task we will work hard with Xilinx to improve it. We are evaluating
Precision RTL from Mentor at the moment, but it is too soon to comment.
We have evaluated the partitioning tool from Auspy (APSII) and I am happy
(and a little embarrassed) to state that it betters Certify. I should not
have ignored Auspy for so long.
Debug and visibility, troublesome for FPGA's, remains an issue. Identify is
clearly best in class and the only real alternative is ChipScope.
I'm not certain what to do about TotalRecall, an exciting product concept,
but Synplicity wasn't offering it to us anyway.
I encourage you to look at Hardi products, now called Synplicity Hardware
Platforms Group. Call your local Synplicity/Hardi sales engineer and get a
presentation and a price quote. After you have done that, let us show you
how we can get you to the same solution at less than 50% of their cost, with
more FPGAs, higher performance, high reliability, better support, and
cheaper tools.
I have (had?) many friends at Synplicity. I hope I can continue those
relationships, but the circumstances will make that, at best, difficult and
probably impossible. To my friends at Synplicity: Sorry. I had no idea.
I do not intend to let you take my business!
- Mike Dini
The Dini Group La Jolla, CA
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