( ESNUG 489 Item 1 ) -------------------------------------------- [03/11/11]
Subject: 78% of MENT customers rate Wally's Mentor as "Generally Positive"
THE TRIFECTA: For 78% of EDA users, Wally's Mentor consists of great point
tools, with great support, provided under customer-sensitive management.
MENT customers enjoy working with Mentor. (See their comments below.)
In a CNBC interview on Tuesday, Carl Icahn said that Mentor Graphics
"should be acquired, or at the very least, be put up for sale." The
NY Times reports that Icahn owns 14.7% of the company and he plans
to nominate at least 3 new directors to the Mentor board next week.
I feel Mentor's present management and how Mentor is currently
run as an EDA company is (CHOOSE ONE):
A. Generally positive.
: ####################################### 78%
B. Generally neutral.
: ######### 17%
C. Generally negative.
: ## 4%
Comments? What's your reasoning for your choice?
Of 251 users in this survey, 57 commented in some way on this question.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
(A) generally positive
Wally actually has an engineering background and knows what he's talking
about -- he's not just a finance guy put in place by Wall Street.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
Well run company. Tools are good, good AEs and good support. MENT is
not a "take a #" or "you are too small for us" service!
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
Wally focuses on making real improvements to the capabilities of their
design tools. Other EDA companies (especially Cadence) focus on making
their tools look good, which is not the same thing as being good.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive
Have always had a pleasant experience with Mentor representatives. I've
been impressed with their CatapultC tool and the length they will go to
help and work with their customers.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
We use Cadence, Synopsys, and Mentor at ON. I, and many others here,
rate Mentor performance and customer service superior over the other
two. They the blow doors off on physical verification.
- Matthew Comard of On Semiconductors
A. Generally positive.
Mentor has support I can count on, whereas my experiences with Synopsys
are not even close to being as good.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
They have good developer teams that listen to their customers and produce
good tools. I think Wally has deeper insight into the EDA road ahead. In
general Mentor's management to me feels like it is in closer touch to the
engineers, while Synopsys and Cadence feel like suits.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
I think Wally does a pretty good job. Mentor is one of the companies that
realized very early that EDA has to be extended to the systems area.
Acquisitions are handled in a decent way (e.g. Modelsim). I have had a
very friendly connection to Mentor Sales staff, they were always very
helpful and always put customer satisfaction before $$$.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
Wally Rhines has a lot of good ideas for Mentor's future.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
I used to work at Mentor. Wally and Greg create an environment that
allows for good point solutions to be developed.
- Rick Tomihiro of Xilinx
A. Generally positive.
Their tools are very good, in some cases better than Cadence and in some
cases needed improvement. Mentor management responded to their customers,
much more then Cadence.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
- Colm Odoherty of Analog Devices, Inc.
A. Generally positive.
This is from my personal experience over the last 5 years with MENT FAEs,
R&D engineers, a couple of product managers, and a VP. The support and
openness to technical discussion and innovation was extremely high,
compared to "pure marketing" doled out by a typical EDA company.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
- Jerry English of Zebra Technologies Corp.
Generally positive. MENT responds to customers better than the Big Two.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
- Darren Galpin of Infineon
A. Generally positive.
As a Tier 1 customer we get good support and good incorporation of our
needs into the Mentor roadmap.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
Mentor chip verification (DRC, LVS) is more capable than SNPS/CDNS/LAVA.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
- Stephen Lai of Solomon Systech Ltd.
A. Generally positive.
I have always enjoyed working with Mentor Graphics. I find their tools
(specifically Modelsim & Questa) to have superior usability compared
with Cadence or Synopsys. Their customer support is good.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
X - A. Generally positive.
Mentor has shown that their P&R tools provide better performance in
large SOC designs. We use Mentor, Cadence and Synposys tools in our
design centre and based on latest trials Mentor seems to have the
edge (for now) for true Multi-Mode-Multi-Corner timing closure and
crosstalk closure for large designs. Some of their strategies are
clearly different from either Synopsys or Cadence and I would like
to see this independence of technical vision maintained.
- Ashfaq Choudhury of STmicroelectronics
Generally positive.
A public company's management has obligations to:
- its stockholders
- its customers
- its employees
- its partners
- its social environment
From a distance, my opinion is that Mentor's management has balanced
these responsibilities well over many years.
- Hal Barbour of CAST, Inc.
A. Generally positive.
Their business model is non-ratable, therefore they can provide much
more flexibility than the other EDA vendors.
Their cooperative attitude is also much better.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
B. Generally neutral.
- Chitlesh Goorah of ON Semiconductor
Generally positive.
My exposure to Mentor is primarily through Calibre, which remains world
class and continues to evolve despite many years as the clear leader.
PERC checks are an example of continued innovation, and demonstrate
that Mentor is not getting fat and happy in spaces where they lead.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
Excellent AEs and support. Good and diverse EDA portfolio.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
(B.) Generally neutral.
I use some of their tools, but I don't follow what or how they are doing.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
C. Generally negative.
Our latest license negotiations with Mentor showed a lack of positive
business behavior. Tool improvements slowed down - support in several
areas is getting worse.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
They have a good suite of products that helps move EDA forward.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
They serve us well and give us a good, lower cost, solution for EDA tools.
- Howard Baumer of Mobius Semiconductors
C. Generally negative. Mentor is going nowhere.
- Ben Madden of LSI
B. Generally neutral.
Have not seen anything real special from them. Their real stronghold is
ModelSim products that they got from Model Tech acquisition.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
B. Generally neutral.
When Mentor has a tool that is useful, they have made poor decisions
that ultimately hurt the tool. ADMS is a prime example. The support
staff was reduced to stupid and development has slowed because developers
end up doing support. ADMS is now so far behind Cadence AMS Designer
that it is no longer worth trying to use from our perspective.
On the other hand, Calibre rocks.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
B. Generally neutral.
Some good products (DFT), but either many holes, or not enough promotion
of the products they have to fill the voids (P&R for example).
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
Some product holes/issues but a majority of the tools are great to use.
Excellent customer service. Well known brand identity.
- Albert Hook of Vitesse Semiconductor
A. Generally positive.
- Edwin Grigorian of NASA JPL
B. Generally neutral.
Only presently using Modelsim and happy that they left it alone for the
most part.
- Tom Jones of Echelon Corp.
B. Generally neutral.
I work for a major semiconductor manufacturer who primarily uses Synopsys
for physical verification and Mentor continues to be aggressive in trying
to get us to use Calibre.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
- Jamey Potechin of Alcatel-Lucent
A. Generally positive.
Many of our engineers like and use their tools.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
- Bryan Davenport of On Semiconductors
A. Generally positive.
Why ruin something if it is not broken?
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
B. Generally neutral.
As both an ex-Mentor employee and as a Mentor user, I have seen Mentor
do some incredibly stupid things and some fairly intelligent things.
For example, the Calibre tool set seems to be decently managed, enough
so that Calibre products are well regarded and are used extensively.
While IC Station uses a database that was developed over 20 years ago.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
Great tools, great pricing, great support and sales teams.
- Vijay Chaugule of Aquantia Corp
A. Generally positive.
Their DFM tool is good and mobile O.S. is pretty good. No single EDA
tool vendor does everything well.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
C. Generally negative.
Mentor tools are difficult to use compared to Cadence. They don't offer
a full front-to-back suite analog simulation suite, so I have to buy
their tools piecemeal.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
Mentor has come up with some of very latest cutting edge technologies,
like CatapultC and in the past, the DFT tools. Mentor's products also
have very high quality.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
Being familiar only with the DFT aspect, they are been very aggressive
(the acquisition of LogicVision, noticeable improvements in their own
DFT tools). I don't know what would happen if it was under the control
of another company, all I can say is I think they have been doing well
over the last few years under Wally's current management.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
B. Generally neutral.
I don't follow the management to have an opinion. If I must say
something, I'll pick B.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
Excellent set of tools, UVM is a plus.
- Arun Chaddha of Tenesix
I feel Mentor is generally positive.
- Wern Koe of SandForce, Inc.
A. Generally positive. XXXX
They focus on specific markets such as DFT.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
B. Generally neutral.
It's a tough business. They are not leading the pack like Synopsys but
they are not falling apart due to mngmt screwups like Cadence & Magma.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
C. Generally negative. [ X ]
They have failed to produce innovative products and their customer
service is attrocious.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
- Wencheng Li of Vitesse Semiconductors
A. Generally positive.
Using Eldo for analog simulations, pretty good tool, better than Cadence
Spectre or Silvaco for analog.
- Brett Bymaster of Bymaster Engineering Services
A. Generally positive.
- SeungHo Choi of Dongbu
A. Generally positive.
Mentor seems to be doing well against the competition carving out a niche
in various parts of the EDA tool flow.
- Scott Evans of Sonics, Inc.
A. Generally positive.
The products are quite usable, and fully featured.
- John Bass of DMS Design
B. Generally neutral.
There are several tools from Mentor that are good: Calibre, 0-In, and it
also has P&R tools now. It is an OK company.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
Excellent customer support and good products.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
C. Generally negative.
During past 2-3 years I have seen rising arrogance from Mentor. It's
very sad as they did have good offerings in some areas. This arrogance
is not most probably not initiated by Management but they are supporting
it with no concrete actions to stop.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
- Radha Venkatesh of NXP
A. Generally positive.
- Andreas Schaefer of Fujitsu
A. Generally positive.
- Hatem Yazbek of Marvell
A. Generally positive.
Some good tools such as Calibre & DFT. It enable competition for other
big EDA monsters Synopsys and Cadence.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
B. Generally neutral.
- Chandramohan Kaliyur of Mindtree
B. Generally neutral.
- Kiran Gurunath of Kawasaki Microelectronics, Inc.
A. Generally positive.
Mentor has shown a good growth record. I'm a QuestaSim user and this
tool has been stable and adhering to System Verilog LRM perfectly when
other tools were quite instable.
People I know who have worked on this tool are pretty happy, too.
- Pushkar Naik of AppliedMicro Inc.
A. Generally positive.
- Sivasankar Nagarajan of Applied Materials, Inc.
B. Generally neutral
They have some good products with which they could have taken huge lead
in the market (like Calibre). But they are conservative with those
products. Then they made some strategic mistakes like buying Sierra
(for huge sum of money). I dont think they got back their "investment"
in Sierra. If they had bought Apple stocks with that money, they could
have been #1 EDA company by now. :)
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive. Mentor seems genuinely interested in the customer.
They do free seminars and the AE's are very helpful.
- Greg Tumbush of Tumbush Enterprises
B. Generally neutral.
Negative: Mentor is still aiming for niches. So lack the fighting spirit
needed to stand against the 2 big pitbulls, SNPS and CDNS.
Negative: They seem to be losing market share!!!! They're losing the
competition against the Big 2!
Positive: They are broadening their portfolio and carefully stretching out
into the realms of the Big 2 (e.g. Sierra Olympus routing solution).
Positive: Mentor products are great. They work very smoothly and reliably
and easily fit into any other vendors' flow.
- Christof Bergmann of Texas Instruments
A. Generally positive. Their commitment to service is fine.
- Winston Worrell of Microsoft
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