( ESNUG 537 Item 10 ) ------------------------------------------- [03/20/14]
Subject: BDA sold, ICC II, Verdi 3, ProPlus, ArchPro, CDNS Tempus, Calibre
ST. PATRICK'S DAY: Here's the latest news & rumors I've heard about EDA and
the fabs. Feel free to comment/correct/scold anything!
- SCOOP I: Multiple spies are reporting simular but conflicting
news. They all agree Berkeley DA "just got"/"is about to get"
acquired -- but they can't agree on exactly who bought BDA?!
The usual suspects:
- Synopsys. Although they have deep pockets, it looks
like Antun Domic is crazy-busy trying to piece together
some sort of SNPS AMS/custom strategy as it is. Why would
he want a 10th SPICE simulator to add to his 9 others?
- Cadence. With all the rage and raw emotions behind the
CDNS vs. BDA lawsuit, I can't see Tom Beckley suddenly
warming up to having BDA AFS and AFS Mega inside CDNS.
- Mentor. Makes sense cause Eldo has one customer (ST),
plus Greg and Wally like to buy growing start-ups. Even
Icahn likes growing start-ups. With the right people, MENT
could grow in AMS/custom. Right now, they ain't there.
- Ansys. With Andrew Yang on the way out the door in 3
months, Ravi Subramanian would make a killer replacement.
AFS would work well under Redhawk/Sentinel/Totems's hood;
and all Apache tools lack multi-threading -- which is
how Invarian is beating Apache in 20/16 nm today -- and which
Ravi's people know how to fix. Plus Ansys CEO, Jim Cashman,
said they're looking for new electrical analysis start-ups
to bolster revenues in his Q3/13 call.
So IF this rumor is true that BDA has been acquired, I give it a
50% chance it's Ansys -- but even I don't believe this 50% because
Ansys seems so indifferent about EDA -- and a 70% chance it's
Mentor because Greg and Wally really do know EDA.
 
The first big question is for how much? Was it a good multple?
Being BDA, I doubt it was a fire sale.
The second big question is what type of acquisition is it? EDA
has three: Buy-to-kill (SNPS/LAVA), Buy-to-absorb (SNPS/AVANTI),
or Buy-to-transform-the-buyer (CDNS/Silicon Perspectives).
[ Editor's Note: Exactly 28 hours after I published this,
Mentor Graphics announced they acquired BDA! My scoop
was 28 hours ahead and my 70% was 100%! Yea! - John ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- SCOOP II: Multiple spies report that on Monday, Aart de Geus is
going to announce "Project Newton" IC Compiler II (ICC II) in
his upcoming keynote at SNUG'14 in Santa Clara.
 
From what I've heard, "Project Newton" was a 5 year undertaking
involving 80 SNPS R&D as a re-engineering of ICC for problems
unique to sub 20 nm P&R -- but it ran into organizational issues
I can't get a good fix on. Rumor was ICC II was to be launched
at DAC'13 in Austin, but it wasn't ready then. Apparently it is
now. From what I've heard, ICC II has a:
- new placer. Runs very fast as initial placement. Runs of
2 or 3 hours now take 1 hour. Initial placement only takes
10% of overall P&R, so not much gain here. Amdahl's law.
- new data model. Old ICC had two separate internal data
models pre-CTS and post-CTS. Basically PhyOpt plus Astro
inside. New ICC II has one data model that's a layer that
unifies the two data models -- means a bit less memory use,
and a minor speed-up because you don't duplicate data.
- new MCMM timer. The old ICC timer was based on Astro.
The new ICC II timer now has MCMM awareness added to it.
Not used too much because the memory footprint is too
restrictive. Instead, most work is done at ECO time for
everybody: ICC, ICC II, EDI, Atoptech, and Olympus; so
tweaks here minorly increase throughput.
- new internal optimizer. Does buffering, resizing, moving
objects, replacing instances, etc. It's rewritten from the
ground up to be multi-CPU (unsure if it's multi-threaded,
distributed, or both). The reports are it's REALLY fast
vs. old ICC, but only up to CTS. Post-CTS it's still slow.
Before ICC could do 1 or 2 scenarios in short time. If
4 scenarios ICC became dog slow. Now ICC II does 4 or 5
scenarios within a reasonable time. Again the MCMM heavy
lifting is done by external ECO tools for all PnR tools.
- old CTS. SNPS R&D is working on a 2nd gen CTS, but it's
not ready yet to be in ICC II. Maybe in 12 to 24 months???
- old Z-Route. Still the same and will be kept, but
doesn't Z-Route use an old/different routing model??? It
still starts over with a new route instead of what was
assumed in the pre-optimization. Convergence still an issue.
If this ICC II rumor is true, what's interesting is it creates a
mass call for rebenchmarking of all P&R tools. That is, if your
engineers have to spend time requalifying ICC II, why not also
benchmark current revs of Atoptech, CDNS EDI, & MENT Olympus-SoC,
too, since your people will all be in benchmarking mode anyway?
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- SCOOP III: I'm hearing conflicting rumors that SNPS is considering
locking-out non-VCS simulators from its highly popular SpringSoft
Verdi 3 Verilog/VHDL debugger (that is, no CDNS Incisive nor MENT
Questa will be allowed) -- yet SNPS is also having a Verdi Interop
Forum inside next week's SNUG'14 to show how open it is???? Huh?
Real Intent is planned to be one of the presentors there, bragging
how their Meridian CDC and Ascent XV plays nice with Verdi 3.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- D'OH!: if you go to the ProPlus web site, you'll find this claim
on their NanoYield/NanoExplorer product page:
 
See that part where it says "supported HSPICE, FineSim" ?? It's
unexpected because I heard ProPlus got kicked out of the Synopsys
InSync program -- because they directly compete against SNPS
HSPICE/FineSim with their NanoSpice simulator. How can ProPlus
be integrated to SNPS tools that they can't even access? D'oh!
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- SCOOP IV: Ironcally, the word is that both Prakash Narain, CEO of
Real Intent, and Kathryn Kranen, CEO of Jasper, are going to be
  
ambushed at SNUG'14 as Synopsys pitches their "Project Renoir",
a complete revamp of the SNPS formal tools that directly compete
against Atrenta/RealIntent and Jasper/MENT Questa Formal tools.
 
"Project Renoir" is static formal and coverage above. Sim is VCS.
Rumor is SNPS R&D used the low power MVSIM and MVRC from the 2007
ArchPro buyout as the starting point of "Project Renoir", they did
a bunch more formal voodoo work on it, slapped a Verdi 3 interface
on it, then SNPS marketing christened it "Verification Compiler"
to make it easier to sell.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- Remember that DeepChip leak last month where Ajoy Bose, CEO of
Atrenta, told his employees "Atrenta's annualized bookings grew a
whopping 52% -- 1/3rd of which came from 37 new customer logos."??
 
On Monday, Atrenta issued a press release with "62% new business"
and "47 new customers" during 2013. SEE? I TOLD YA SO! :)
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- It looks like David Rinehart, former VP of Sales at Aldec, who had
23 years with Aldec (since 1992!) has been spotted at Synopsys.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- My spies report Joe Costello has been seen in the Valley trying to
get more funding for Montana Systems, his still unannounced desktop
box emulation system. Don't know if he was successful or not.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- It turns out the earlier rumor of PrimeTime II coming out during
SNUG'14 has been muddled with this rumor of a new ICC II timer
coming out at the same time. And it also appears that PT II
just might be a bit-o'-FUD that an unnamed SNPS saleman told some
customers to buy time against the new CDNS Tempus STA publicity;
so don't be suprised if "old" PrimeTime suddenly now does multi-
threaded and distributed (like Tempus) -- but it's pitched as an
improvement of "old" PrimeTime. Why? Because "old" PrimeTime
feels safe and is trusted by users. A "new" PrimeTime means
users might feel they have to requalify it.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- I've also had a single source say that Mike Dini of the Dini Group
has sold DNV7F4A's to two different "Wall Streety types" to -- and
I kid you not -- do bitcoin mining.
  
The DNV7F4A is Xilinx Virtex 7 based with 56 M ASIC gates capacity.
And the irony here is that on his personal blog, Mike Dini likes
to endlessly rant about the stupidity of bitcoins!
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- FUN APPLE/TSMC/SAMSUNG NEWS TITLES:
Feb 17 -- TSMC to snatch all of Apple's A8 chip orders?
Feb 17 -- Apple reportedly will drop Samsung A8
manufacturing for TSMC due to low yields
Feb 24 -- TSMC to deliver A8 chips to Apple, not Samsung
Mar 05 -- Apple rumored to be dumping Samsung in favor
of TSMC for A8 chip
Mar 10 -- TSMC sole supplier of Apple's A8? NO WAY,
says Samsung, US TOO
Mar 10 -- Apple decides to stick with Samsung for A8
Mar 10 -- Samsung to begin A8 chip production in Q2
Mar 11 -- Samsung will make Apple A8 processors
along with TSMC
Mar 12 -- Samsung to produce portions of Apple's A8
chips after all?
Mar 13 -- Apple A8 contract winner - TSMC, Samsung
or both?
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- Oh, to be a fly on the wall: Rambus is doing a PrimeTime SNUG'14
paper (MA-07) 11:00 Monday on PT-ADV in a "non-Synopsys PnR flow".
How the $#*% did that get by SNPS marketing? Who's PnR is it?
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- FUN QUOTE:
"Your story about the Magma people taking over Cadence's
digital design is very wrong.
I have worked in Cadence R&D for several years and echo
the feelings of many colleagues on this. We work hard to
deliver great products to our customers. We are proud of
what we do. Yes, there's a few new ex-Magma guys here,
but the rest of us are not just a bunch of layabouts!!"
- [ A Cadence Employee ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- Remember that story back in December on how Mentor was experimenting
with HOW TO YouTube Calibre tutorials that you could see completely
for free? (i.e. MENT was not harvesting your personal data for it?)
 
I put a link to that Calibre-inside-of-IC-Compiler video and, as of
yesterday, it got 1638 engineers viewing it.
------------> https://www.youtube.com/user/ICNanometerDesign
|
-- When I told the MENT folks they said they now have a whole family of
54 detailed Calibre HOW TO YouTube videos open for everyone to view.
"No registration required."
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
And again, feel free to comment/correct/scold/question anything you see here
by just emailing me directly. And, yes, you'll be ANONYMOUS!
- John Cooley
DeepChip.com Holliston, MA
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