Editor's Note: This was orginally published in Wiretap 070521, but
    since it's a new topic, I've moved it to it's own Wiretap.  -John


In addition, I also had yet a 4th untested source tell me that Magma was in
talks to buy Silicon Canvas.  For how much money, it's unknown.  What's
interesting here is the timing.  It was waaaaay back in the 2004-2005 time
frame was when the SiCanvas Laker tool was "hot" and it had a technical lead
over Cadence Virtuoso.  See:

               http://www.deepchip.com/items/dac03-34.html
               http://www.deepchip.com/items/dac04-26.html

But the big blunder SiCanvas did was that they practically ignored marketing
in the US & Europe -- and instead focused their efforts on the Taiwan fabs.
As best as I can figure out, in a Homer Simpson moment SiCanvas Marketing
very seriously believed that the Taiwan fabs would actually stop being EDA
vendor neutral and they would instead convince their customers to use Laker
over Virtuoso!  (SiCanvas Marketing was so cocky about this strategy that
they even stopped updating their own company web page for a while there.)
What an absolute colossal disaster!  D'oh!

What the Cadence folks later told me is that they "thanked God" for this
world class blunder because it bought them enough time for Virtuoso R&D to
catch up.  "For a moment there, they had us; but we came back with even
better stuff once our guys got on it," is the quote I'm remembering.

It'll be interesting to see what Magma does with Laker if they really do
acquire Silicon Canvas.  It can be said that being roughly equal to Virtuoso
might be enough in a world hungry for viable Virtuoso alternatives.  Custom
layout tools are the last remaining monopoly in EDA.