( ESNUG 500 Item 3 ) -------------------------------------------- [03/08/12]
Subject: CDNS too afraid of SV sales to support SNPS/MENT Specman "e"
> My CAD department likes the idea of second sourcing for all SW we use. It
> would be a *big* help if we knew of any good quality non-CDNS Specman "e"
> simulators. (Neither SNPS/MENT will tell of these because they're too
> invested in having us switch everything over to System Verilog.)
>
> So I would like to ask your readers if they're using either the Synopsys
> or Mentor versions of Specman "e", could they please write in about the
> quality of these versions of "e", its compatibility to CDNS "e", and how
> did they get SNPS/MENT to sell "e" to them?
>
> We have countless man-years invested in "e". If we don't have to lose that
> investment, it would help a lot. Thanks.
>
> - from http://www.deepchip.com/items/0495-02.html
From: [ The Mouse That Roared ]
Hi John,
Anon please.
I like to learn from history.
Back in the early 90's there was a small company, Cadence, selling a
proprietary simulation language called Verilog. The whole world, with
Synopsys at the forefront, went against Verilog and defined VHDL as the
new standard.
Everyone predicted that Verilog would die by 1993 at the latest.
However the users liked Verilog and many of them stuck to it. Eventually
Cadence made Verilog public with IEEE 1364. At that point, since companies
started having mixed environments due to acquisitions etc., it became clear
that the only way to survive would be to support both languages.
Synopsys had to support Verilog and Cadence had to support VHDL.
The funny thing is that by 2000, Cadence was considered the driver of VHDL
and Synopsys became the driver of Verilog, to the point it was trying
to kill VHDL.
When Cadence acquired Verisity, I was sure history would repeat itself.
Many companies were arguing that System Verilog didn't make sense for
verification and it was so complicated, and the idea of combining design
and verification was wrong, etc. etc. They vowed not to leave "e".
Verisity made "e" public as IEEE 1647 at the time.
However Cadence made several strategic mistakes in this game and downplayed
Specman "e" while making strong statements about supporting the System
Verilog IEEE 1800 standard. While there were customers and vendors who
were willing to be more bullish in supporting "e", it seems like Cadence was
sheepish and focused on marketing its System Verilog support and not pushing
the multi-language support as something which was needed.
This enabled Synopsys to push System Verilog even more and create a drift
towards System Verilog. The Synopsys management is very smart, and they
realized quickly that, no matter what, they will still have to support
Specman "e" if they don't want to leave those customers to Cadence, and
they did a good job doing it.
Today there is still a very strong customer base using "e", happy with it,
and resisting the pressure to move from "e" to System Verilog.
But don't expect Cadence to help you with any non-CDNS "e"; they're too
shortsighted and don't want to scare off possible System Verilog sales.
- [ The Mouse That Roared ]
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