!!! "It's not a BUG, 
/o o\ / it's a FEATURE!" (508) 429-4357
( > )
\ - / INDUSTRY GADFLY: "Gary and me"
_] [_
by John Cooley
Holliston Poor Farm, P.O. Box 6222, Holliston, MA 01746-6222
Two weeks after I published the DAC'03 Trip Report on DeepChip, I've just
now gotten around to getting the DAC attendance numbers. Sorry about that.
DAC'01 attendance was down 12 percent to 14,081 people. DAC'02 attendance
was down 32 percent at 9,452 people total. And DAC'03 overall attendance
was weakly up 15 more people at 9,467. That's NOT up 15 percent; that's up
15 more PEOPLE. In other words, after 3 years of steadily declining
attendance since 2000, in 2003 DAC attendance finally stopped shrinking
and has leveled off at roughly 9,450 attendees.
But that's not the real story.
The real story is that while there were 39 percent fewer EDA vendors at the
2003 DAC, a noticable 23 percent *more* EDA buyers showed up.
EDA Vendors:
DAC 2001 ######################################## 7,969
DAC 2002 ########################### 5,424 (-32%)
DAC 2003 #################### 3,914 (-39%) <-- vendors are wary
EDA Buyers:
DAC 2001 ############ 2,501
DAC 2002 ######## 1,644 (-34%)
DAC 2003 ########## 2,022 (+23%) <-- but buyers are returning!
Academics/Press/Students:
DAC 2001 ####### 1,310
DAC 2002 #### 769 (-43%)
DAC 2003 ##### 960 (+25%)
Guests/Wives/Husbands/Others:
DAC 2001 ############ 2,301
DAC 2002 ######## 1,615 (-30%)
DAC 2003 ## 498 (-69%)
I got a chuckle that Guests/Wives/Husbands/Others dropped 69 percent. "Hey,
kids, do you want to go see daddy at the engineering nerd trade show or go
see Mickey Mouse in Disneyland?"
As a professional courtesy, I called Gary Smith of Dataquest to tell him
about these attendance numbers before publishing them. I could hear his
keyboard clicks as I told him the data. He thanked me and then he thanked
me for the DAC Trip Report. "You outdid yourself this year, John," Gary
said on the phone. "It was so big, I sent it to my printer. It took me
all week to finish reading it. I think it was more than the 254 pages
you reported. Lots of meat there."
After that, our conversation became about the EDA vendors who were either
missing or under represented in the DAC'03 report.
RubiCAD -- The surprise no show at DAC'03 was RubiCAD. They've been at
DAC for years, so it caused a number of people to wonder about how well
their business was doing. RubiCAD's arch rival, Sagantec, loved it, but
Gary says that RubiCAD's doing better than what this no show indicates.
"They're getting more market share than Sagantec," said Gary. "But you
know Michael Reinhardt. Maybe he didn't think he needs more leads."
Circuit Semantics -- No show at DAC'03. They were dealing with serious,
company-threatening legal problems with Silvaco during the DAC time frame.
(Why go to DAC if you might not be around tomorrow?) Silvaco won the
lawsuit and Circuit Semantics had to sell off some of their key patents
for $9 million to have enough cash to pay off Silvaco.
HPL Technologies -- chip yield optimization tools. HPL did DAC'02, but
skipped DAC'03. Company legal problems in fiscal year 2002 because
(oops!) their CEO reported $28 million (80% of sales) over 5 quarters
that didn't exist. The CEO plead guilty to wire fraud in late 2002.
HPL's biggest rival is PDF Solutions.
PDF Solutions -- HPL's only real competitor. Doesn't do DAC. The fabs
are not happy about PDF, if HPL goes under. Fabs don't want to be locked
into a PDF-only situation.
ChipMD -- This was their first year at DAC. It looks like they *might* be
a new challenger to HPL and PDF Solutions, but I'm only getting that from
the fact that ChipMD talks about yield and DFM in their little write-up in
the DAC'03 Exhibit Guide. The only two EDA buyers who noticed ChipMD at
DAC'03 didn't like them for different reasons. "I have looked at, but not
evaluated, the competition -- ChipMD, and one other new guy that was at
DAC. I wasn't impressed," wrote Steve Avery of Cisco. "The most annoying
floor show must have been ChipMD. I got sick & tired of their fake French
guy by Monday morning," wrote Anders Nordstrom of Elliptic Semiconductor.
Stone Pillar -- Their first DAC and hardly anyone noticed them. "They're
DFM guys. I haven't spoken to Stone Pillar, but they won't be important
until we hit 65 nm," says Gary.
AmmoCore -- Also barely noticed at DAC'03. Gary says "This is AmmoCore's
3rd try at a business plan. People are confused about what they do now.
I know I am." Last I knew, AmmoCore sold a hierarchical placer, Fabrix,
and that Gary Larsen (ex-EPIC & ex-Circuit Semantics) was their new CEO.
Incentia -- At DAC'03, but unnoticed. A few years ago this Taiwanese
company had its 15 minutes of fame when it said it was going to take on
Synopsys in the RTL synthesis and Static Timing Analysis markets. See
http://www.deepchip.com/items/0394-14.html Since then, Incentia has been
virtuallyly silent. Or as Gary says "They don't make a lot of noise in
the industry."
ChipVision -- ChipVision is the old Offis Research Labs. They have a tool
called Orinoco that does RTL power stuff. They had a booth at DAC'03 and
even though power was a hot topic this year, ChipVision only got 2 short
passing comments from the users. (In contrast, although they do a non-RTL
approach to power, Sequence CoolTime and Apache Redhawk got a combined
15 *pages* of user reviews.) "ChipVision typically does well at DATE
rather than DAC," says Gary. "It's because ChipVision is a European
company and the Europeans are more interested in high level design."
SimPOD -- Last seen 2 years ago at DAC'01. "They tried do an accelorator,
emulator type of product, but it was focused on IP. I haven't talked to
them in over 2 years," says Gary.
Simutech -- Sold an emulator box. Out of business.
Novilit -- At DAC'02, but not at DAC'03. "I have Novilit listed as a
communications compiler. A lot of ES level companies like Novilit want
to talk to system architects and they're questioning if DAC is their
show," warns Gary.
Silicon Forrest Research -- The DAC'03 Exhibit Guide says they were at
that year's DAC, but the last user reference I can find anywhere about
Silicon Forrest dates back 5 years ago to an old DAC'98 Trip Report.
"They were doing formal analysis stuff," states Gary. "Basically
assertions stuff. Are they still around?"
Veritable, Inc. -- Sold an assertions formal tool called Verity-CHECK.
Skipped DAC'03.
Pittsburgh Simulation -- "Their name has only just started popping up in
that last 4 months," says Gary. "They have a high speed SW simulator
reputed to approach accelerator speeds. They claim to have emulator
speeds, but the people I've talked to say that might be more marketing
hype than technology."
Prosper Design -- Cell creation tools. They did DAC 2 years ago; now
neither Gary nor I know where they are.
EverCAD -- does a DRC tool; nobody knows much about them. They were at
DAC last year. Skipped this year.
Silicon Valley Research -- "They've been dying off for years now," says
Gary. "I think they've been just living off of royalties. They used
to be great. Good technology. They were leading edge back in the
gate array days. They've partnered with Prolific last I heard and
that was in 2001." Last year people joked about their absurdly large
DAC booth. This year SVR was a no show.
Y Explorations -- An older Japanese C-to-RTL synthesis company that was
barely noticed at DAC'03. Its rival Forte got 6 pages of glowing customer
comments for their unannouced Forte Cynthesizer. "Y Explorations broke
up. Dan is no longer with them and one of the Japanese consortiums is
trying market it," says Gary. "I don't think they're getting any momentum
except in Japan. I haven't talked to Y Explorations in 2 years."
Esterel -- Did DAC'02, but was a no show at DAC'03. "Esterel sells their
own proprietary language to do high level control logic design. It was
developed in Europe. It's yet another language and my guess is that they
were hunkering down to get their technical solution working before coming
back to DAC," says Gary.
Oridus -- Sells some sort of Internet web conferencing software for chip
designers (or something like that.) They got one minor user comment. "I
don't pay attention to Internet start-ups like most designers," says Gary.
Yet another dot com going dot bomb?
Optimal Corp. -- They were at DAC'03, but no one wrote on them. "They're
a thermal analysis company," says Gary. "So they'd probably be more
noticed at a PCB show than at DAC."
SynAPPS Software -- "I've heard of them, but never been briefed on them,"
says Gary. Apparently SynAPPS makes custom EDA tools, but no one knows
how good or bad the SynAPPS stuff is. This was their first year at DAC.
Tenison Technology -- They make VTOC, a tool that translates Verilog or
VHDL to SystemC. Last seen at http://www.DeepChip.com/items/0414-01.html
Don't know why they weren't noticed at DAC'03.
Prosilog -- A French competitor to Summit Design that also sell a GUI
on top of SystemC. Although at DAC'03, Prosilog doesn't seem to have much
user mindshare. Only one user noticed Prosilog in passing, while Summit
got 4 and 1/2 pages of user commentary on their Summit Visual Elite tool.
Beige Bag Software -- "They have a $69 SPICE simulator," says Gary. "All
the cheap analog guys love them. They might just sell by web and mail,
making DAC too pricy for them to show at." Skipped DAC'03.
Translogic Corp. -- Sells HDL debug tool. Skipped DAC'03.
Simucad -- Missing at DAC'03. "Isn't Simucad one guy down in Florida?,"
asks Gary. "They used to have the Silos III Verilog simulator and then
they came out with the fault simulator, HyperFault." Neither of us know
where they are now.
Aldec -- cheap seats in Verilog & VHDL simulation. Not noticed at DAC'03.
Fintronic -- even cheaper seats in Verilog simulation. Not noticed.
That conversation I had with Gary was last Thursday.
Today being 5 days later on Tuesday, I discovered an interesting fact I
hadn't told Gary. In the 20 days since it went up on DeepChip, the DAC'03
Trip Report generated ~26,000 reader visits viewing ~95,000 pageviews. What
was interesting here was that the four sublinks in the report for Synopsys,
Cadence, Mentor, and Magma each generated very roughly the *same* number of
reader pageviews.
http://www.deepchip.com/items/dac03-24.html
http://www.deepchip.com/items/dac03-25.html
http://www.deepchip.com/items/dac03-26.html
http://www.deepchip.com/items/dac03-38.html
Why that's interesting is that Synopsys, Cadence, and Mentor each ballparks
3,000 to 4,000 employees. Magma has roughly 300 to 400 employees. It's
impressive that a company 1/10th the size of any one of the Big Three alone
managed to get a measurable mindshare footprint roughly the *same* size as
Synopsys, Cadence, and Mentor. I didn't expect that.
My congrats to your marketing team, Rajeev.
-----
John Cooley runs the E-mail Synopsys Users Group (ESNUG), is a
contract ASIC designer, and loves hearing from engineers at
or (508) 429-4357.
|
|
