!!!     "It's not a BUG,                         jcooley@TheWorld.com
   /o o\  /  it's a FEATURE!"                              (508) 429-4357
  (  >  )
   \ - /         INDUSTRY GADFLY: "The Doughnut Company"
   _] [_         
                   by John Cooley, EE Times Columnist

      Holliston Poor Farm, P.O. Box 6222, Holliston, MA  01746-6222


In putting together the DVCon'03 CEO panel last week, I invited Mentor CEO
Wally Rhines.  Everything was going smoothly until I mentioned that Erach
Desai, a sometimes controversial, independent stock analyst was going to be
on the panel, too.  Suddenly the Mentor people told me outright that "it
would be a cold day in hell" before Wally ever appeared on a panel with
Erach.  These guys flat out hated Desai & they didn't care who knew.  Whoa.

I searched the EE Times site on Mentor and Desai.  "I bet there will be no
organic growth from the Mentor/Innoveda acquisition," Desai said.  "Mentor
has become a bottom feeder that sucks up smaller, dying companies, not
small companies on the rise that haven't reached their full potential."
In other quotes Desai said that Mentor should try to get Cadence to buy
them.  Or that the much smaller Magma should somehow acquire Mentor to put
Calibre in the hands of the Magma sales force.  I laughed.  Desai doesn't
sugarcoat what he thinks.  I respect that.  But I have to disagree with him
on the tone of his view of Mentor as a company overall.

As an EDA user, I've seen Mentor be very powerful in the areas it focuses
on.  The problem is that as a company, Mentor's a doughnut.  In the front
end, Model Tech owns the Verilog and VHDL PC simulation market.  Exemplar
does OK in FPGA synthesis.  The Fastscan tools are best-in-class.  Its
Inventra IP library sells designs by the boatload.  In the back end, its
Calibre and xCalibre tools are also best-in-class.  The problem is that
doughnut hole smack dab in the middle where synthesis and place & route
are.  It simply screams for Mentor to acquire Magma or Monterey to fill it!

And I'm not the only one who sees this.

"I must admit Mentor perplexes me.  They have competitive (and sometimes
best-in-class) tools in DRC/LVS/extraction, scan insertion and ATPG,
simulation and formal verification, and a very strong IP business," wrote
John Weiland of Intrisix to my DAC'02 survey.  "But Mentor has a huge hole
right in the middle - synthesis, place & route.  I wonder what would happen
if they got together with Magma."

They say Mentor was the second bidder before Synopsys acquired Avanti.  I
think it's only a matter of time and price before Mentor buys Magma or
Monterey.  When it happens, it'll be interesting to see what Desai says
about Mentor.  And when Mentor's no longer a doughnut company, maybe then
we'll see panels with Wally and Erach together. 

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    John Cooley runs the E-mail Synopsys Users Group (ESNUG), is a
    contract ASIC designer, and loves hearing from engineers at
    "jcooley@TheWorld.com" or (508) 429-4357.