( DAC 10 Item 8 ) ---------------------------------------------- [ 09/10/10 ]
Subject: Users react to the EDA360 vision after DAC
EDA360 EVERYWHERE: To recap, 6 weeks *before* DAC, I published the EDA360
manfesto on DeepChip to see what the users thought about it -- and the
lesson learned was that users (82% of them to be exact) really don't like
reading 32 page long manifestos!
So 4 weeks *after* DAC, I sent out my usual post-DAC survey to EDA users:
"What were the 3 or 4 most INTERESTING specific tools that you
saw at DAC this year? WHY where they interesting to you?"
To my surprise, "John Bruggeman" and/or "EDA360" were either directly or
indirectly mentioned as one of the most interesting things at DAC'10.
What's no surprise is that the users seem to have no consensus on EDA360.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"That Cadence Burgerman was everywhere at DAC. At least he's reachable,
unlike Lip Bu Tan."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Aart focuses on getting more EDA market share. Bruggeman focuses on
growing the entire EDA market."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Cadence @ DAC 2009
Lip Bu Tan gave scripted answers to safe, agreed upon questions on
stage in the CEO panel. Afterwards he was surrounded by handlers who
kept the little people at arms lenghth at all times.
Cadence @ DAC 2010
I got to talk one-on-one with John Bruggeman in the hallway for a good
15 minutes. He even gave me his business card. I'm not a bigwig
customer VP; I'm just a verification engineer. He's serious about
this 360 stuff. It felt like the Costello days in a way."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"EDA360 was everywhere at DAC. Those Cadence Marketing guys are fanatics.
I'm surprised EDA360 wasn't embossed on my hotel room toilet paper."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Wow. EDA360 marketing even co-opted the Denali EDA Idol competition.
They renamed it the Cadence EDA360 Idol competition."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Denali for 15 years. 12 years of Denali DAC parties. Over $1 million
spent in booze (according to Gogolewski.) It'll be sad to see it all
gone in a EDA360 flurry."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"I think Denali-Cadence was an excellent EDA360 move."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"WTF EDA360? Since when has IP NOT dreamt of being 'constraint-driven'
and 'integration-ready' ? Since when has Cadence and Synopsys NOT
claimed incorporating IP with their toolsets was easy ? Since when
has both the dream and the claim NOT been true ?"
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Finally! Someone is going to take on Synopsys' Designware monopoly!"
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"We would welcome any viable alternative to the lock DW has on IP."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Cadence to take on SNPS in the IP biz? Good luck with that. Mentor
has tried for years. Cadence buying Denali was smart, yet the SNPS
counter of Virage hurts."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"My coworkers and I applaud the EDA360 idea of a truely Open Integration
Platform that does all that the Cadence marketing folk say it will do.
Our problem is in reality CDNS, SNPS, MENT, LAVA each have their own
proprietary 'platforms' implemented to lock out their rivals' tools."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Some of 360 sounds like IC Manage's pitch on IP reuse. If you don't have
good IP data management, you won't know who is using what. You have a
template of things to be checked in. For example, you have one group
writing Verilog RTL for the IP and another defining the IP's physical
aspects. Both must be in sync and checked in."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"With EDA360, people don't realize that every step has file management.
Chip design, package design, board design, and software development all
involve files that need to be configuration managed so you can say your
final product contains all the right files. I wouldn't be surprised if
Cadence cut a deal with IC Manage for EDA360 because it can work with
all these files types, e.g. Cadence design data, RTL design data,
simulation and verification data files, SW files, text files, etc..."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"EDA360 - why would Cadence want to bail on its Virtuoso monopoly for
a part of the embedded system design business? A monopoly always
makes more profits than a lessor non-monopoly share."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"To hook EDA360 into Virtuoso is a bit of a reach."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"If 360 increases support $$$ for Virtuoso, I'm for it.
If 360 decreases support $$$ for Virtuoso, I'm against it."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"EDA360 wants to mimic the digital designers by raising the level of
abstraction in analog design. Chose one: accuracy or run time.
Since digital is a '1' or a '0' in Verilog (or a TLM) on nice clean
clock edges, you can speed up run time without losing accuracy.
In analog there are no such neat tricks."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"I think the proposed Cadence apps-first mindset is naive. SW has always
been defined by what the HW of the day can run. Win 7 running on an old
4.77 MHz Intel 8088 PC would be an exercise in stupidity."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"I don't get 360. Apps-first based design has been around forever. This
is not a new idea. For general SW you use an Intel or AMD. For DSP,
use TI or AD. For graphics, it's Nvidia or ATI. It's when you need
a better price/speed/power performance is when you craft custom HW."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Cadence application-first design is just another way of saying they're
expanding into embedded systems. Mentor is way ahead of them there."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"My Q to Bruggerman: How do you design SW if you have no idea what the
HW is capable of doing?"
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Cadence is going to rediscover the chicken-and-egg problem when it trys
its first free floating SW project with no underlying predefined HW."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"I think the only viable way to create app-first design is through FPGAs.
Otherwise the first time one revs an app, its hardware breaks."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"EDA360 has convinced me to look more into Xilinx and Altera stock."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Is Bruggeman setting up CDNS to be acquired by Wind River?"
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Since Cadence proposed EDA360, why don't they push more into C-based
design and out of HW specific languages?"
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Mentor has been doing EDA360 for decades yet they still sell 1/3 of
the world's Verilog, VHDL, and System Verilog simulators."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Instead of going through all the hassle of EDA360, Cadence should just
buy Mentor before Carl Icahn guts it."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"EDA360 SaaS sounds a lot like the old Cadence let-us-design-it-for-you
consulting sales pitch that Joe Costello promoted decades ago. Didn't
that failed pitch lead to Joe's ousting?"
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"My boss told our IT group that we were looking into Cadence SaaS if they
didn't give us better support. The head of IT told him to %$#* off."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"CDNS SAAS has some appeal if they can freely integrate non-CDNS tools
into the flow. I also don't know if the bigger 3rd party EDA vendors
would be amenable to CDNS having their SW. It might be against their
licensing agreements."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"EDA360 SaaS is Synopsys DesignSphere from 10 years ago. It failed."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Yay! Keep improving Palladium XL EDA360!"
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"The Cadence EDA360 vision reminds me of the Cadence X Initiative.
Will it still be around 3 years from now?"
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"It's refreshing that Cadence is at least trying to have a vision for
the entire EDA industry. I have to give them credit for that."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"If Cadence can deliver on half of what its promising in EDA360, it'll
return to #1. That's an 'if'."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
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