Subject: Stingy FPGA customers is probably what killed off GateRocket EDA

> 5.) The best Catch-22 tool I plan to see at this DAC is GateRocket.
>     It cleverly using FPGAs to validate FPGAs.  It uses a Xilinx
>     Virtex-4 LX-200 (or an Altera Stratix II 180) board that goes
>     into your PC drive bay that they call a "RocketDrive".  First
>     off, you synth/P&R your FPGA design, dump it into the RD, the
>     simulator on my PC can then directly access the RD via the PLI
>     and happily run.  All the control is through PLI calls.  They
>     can run up to 8 RocketDrives in parallel.  It's quick, dirty,
>     cheap, and way cool!  (booth 2559)  Ask for Dave Orecchio.
>
>         - from "My Cheesy Must See List for DAC 2007"
>           http://www.deepchip.com/gadfly/gad060107.html


On July 15th, 2011 GateRocket ceased operations.

In an August 3rd EE Times story, Brian Bailey broke the news of GateRocket's
closing with an interesting analysis:

   - GateRocket had innovative FPGA technology that won an EDN and
     Electronics Design Magazine top product awards, and a DesignCon
     DesignVision award.

   - GateRocket had three technology patents.

   - GateRocket had $6.5 million in VC funding, the latest being
     $2 million in December 2009.

   - GateRocket had worldwide distribution: US, Europe, Japan, India, China

   - GateRocket showed at DAC'11 and even had new stuff to show at DAC.
     (They showed "SoftPatch" which lets you patch your FPGA's without
      a recompilation cycle -- which otherwise can chow a lot of time.)

So what killed GateRocket?  "I did an extensive search on the Internet and I
couldn’t find a single mention of an actual customer; not one," wrote Brian.

Long story short, it looks REALLY bad if your 7 year old start-up still
doesn't have at least one independent user review of your tool on the web.

Gary Smith backed Brian's analysis by commenting: "Another example of the
FPGA design community shooting themselves in the foot."

Apparently it still doesn't pay to make killer EDA tools for FPGA designers.
They're too used to getting free EDA tools directly from the FPGA vendors.

    - John Cooley
      DeepChip.com                               Holliston, MA