> What troubles me about the death of TransEDA is that it's effectively also
> the death of any more future development of code coverage.  That is, because
> it was their reason for existance, TransEDA pushed code coverage tools to
> become ever better.  But since I doubt Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor ever saw
> code coverage as a sales differentiator, now that the TransEDA pressure is
> off, the Big 3 are going to put their simulator R&D energies elsewhere.  In
> short, code coverage has become a "mature" been-there-done-that technology.
>
>     - from http://www.deepchip.com/wiretap/060626.html


From: Tom Anderson <tla=user domain=synopsys spot mom>

Hi, John,

You refer to "'free' built-in linters Leda/HAL/MTI in VCS/NC-Sim/Modelsim"
and this is incorrect.  Although VCS does have some very good linting
capabilities built-in, Leda is an entirely *separate* Synopsys product that
provides RTL checking and extensive programmability in addition to
traditional coding checks.  With our recent advances in checks for SDCs and
for low-power design, Leda is as closely aligned with the implementation
flow (synthesis, static timing analysis, DFT, etc.) as it is with VCS.

Second, you say that you "doubt that Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor ever saw code
coverage as a sales differentiator" and that the apparent demise of TransEDA
will reduce innovation.  Here at Synopsys, we find that the code coverage
capabilities of VCS are in fact a significant differentiator against other
simulators.  Our customers generate a lot of coverage data from their huge
regression suites, and VCS' ability to track coverage with minimal overhead
and merge large databases is very important.  We also have very tight links
between VCS and our Magellan hybrid formal tool, allowing Magellan to refine
and improve coverage results from simulation.

While we give TransEDA due credit for being one of the pioneers in code
coverage, in truth they had not been significant competition for some time
and their demise will not reduce our innovation.  Driven by the ever-growing
needs of our customers, we will continue to put significant engineering
resources into maintaining our industry lead in coverage performance,
unified coverage analysis, and tight integration of simulation and formal
to achieve the best possible coverage results.

    - Tom Anderson
      Synopsys                                   Mountain View, CA


 Editor's Note: Tom was a designer at Kubota from '88 - '94 before he joined
 the dark side (EDA marketing) at 0-in.  For the past 2 years he's happily
 been the evil director of technical marketing for Leda & Magellan.  - John