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\ - / INDUSTRY GADFLY: "A Certain Lack Of Precision"
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by John Cooley
Holliston Poor Farm, P.O. Box 6222, Holliston, MA 01746-6222
I must say I was a bit surprised when I first saw Gary Smith's 2002
Dataquest FPGA Synthesis market share numbers just published last month.
(Yea, I know it's 2004 now, but because it takes so long to gather and
correct all the data, the best market share numbers we can get are usually
10 to 14 months after the fact.) To understand my reaction first take a
look at the 2001 numbers:
2001 Dataquest FPGA Synthesis Market: $52.3 million total
Synplicity ############################ $28.2 (54%)
Mentor/Exemplar ################### $19.4 (37%)
Synopsys ### $3.1 (7%)
other # $1.0 (2%)
Everything seems normal here. Synplicity was in the lead. Mentor followed
respectfully behind and Synopsys was the pipsqueak in FPGA synthesis.
More importantly, the 2001 numbers pass the "smell test", too. That is,
it's easy to find lots of user banter from that timeframe talking about
how good Synplicity FPGA synthesis is, some lessor discussion around
Mentor/Exemplar's FPGA synthesis, and a few users trashing Synopsys FPGA
synthesis. The 2001 Dataquest numbers here reflect what users are saying.
Now look at the bloody 2002 numbers!
2002 Dataquest FPGA Synthesis Market: $44.2 million total
Synplicity ################### $19.4 (44%)
Mentor/Exemplar ################### $19.0 (43%)
Synopsys ### $5.3 (12%)
other # $0.4 (1%)
First off, overall FPGA synthesis market *shrank* 15% in 2002 ??!! Huh?
As sure as ASIC design starts have been shrinking, FPGA design starts have
been growing in the past 4 years. No only that, FPGAs have been getting
bigger and bigger every year -- thus driving a stronger demand for FPGA
synthesis tools. Maybe you can do a 10,000 gate design using schematic
capture, but God help you if you're not using simulation and synthesis for
a 100,000 gate design.
On the other hand, 2002 economically was best described as having the
Internet bubble fully popped, layoffs everywhere, and the big trade shows
like DAC having plummeting attendance -- this could explain the 15% decline
in overall FPGA synthesis sales...
But what's unbelievable here is that, apparently while nobody was watching,
Mentor/Exemplar somehow managed to catch up with Synplicity???!!! That is,
Mentor sales remained steady while Synplicity sales dropped 31% ??!! And
Synopsys FPGA synthesis market share, although small, somehow manged to
almost double at the same time, too????
None of these "facts" pass the "smell test"!!!
Here are the user voices taken directly from the 2002 SNUG Trip Report at
http://www.deepchip.com/items/snug02-13.html
"Synplify seems solid in FPGAs. FPGA Express has always seemed lacking.
Never tried Exemplar."
- Kevin Hubbard of Siemens
"Synplicity for FPGAs. Popular, simple, and produces good results."
- Scott Campbell of Motorola
"As far as I know, FPGA Express is dead. We haven't tried FPGA
Compiler II. Synplicity is good but is often too smart for my
own good. We chose Synplicity over FPGA Express for our 200 MHz
Virtex E and Virtex 2 designs because we seem to need the extra knobs
to tweak synthesis results. So far, we've met our goal of not using
schematics or hand-placement to achieve our performance targets in
the slow speed grade Virtex 2."
- an anon engineer
"I have evalusted these FPGA tools head to head probably 3 times in the
last 7 years. Synplicity has won hands down each time. It's easy to
use and faster. Results of each are fairly similar but it took a lot
more work on the two other tools to get the same results.
- Scott Vincelette of Flarion
"Synplicity is on top, with Exemplar a very close #2. FPGA Express
(which is actually a dead product now, replaced by FPGA Compiler II)
is a distant third. I field about 20 FPGA design questions every
week, with only a few ASIC questions, so I know a great deal about
this issue. I grade these FPGA tools on:
1) Quality of output
a) Accuracy
b) Speed (of resulting design)
2) VHDL constructs the tool understands
3) Support for new FPGAs
Thus my main stream FPGA tool is Synplicity. I keep a copy of
Exemplar around as a second opinion, and I have dropped support on
my FPGA Express seats."
- David Bishop of Kodak
"I don't know much about Exemplar, but I am very familiar with Synopsys
FPGA Express/FPGA Compiler II (FC2) and Synplify Pro for FPGAs. I have
used both for real designs. No contest. Synplify Pro wins hands down,
walking away. It is faster. It covers more of the VHDL language. It
supports inferring single or dual port (either distributed or block)
RAMs from arrays in RTL. It makes better use of built-in arithmetic
carry logic. Synplify's schematic creation/viewing abilities are far
beyond the feeble attempts by FC2. It works with directly instantiated
entities/architectures, instead of dumping core with no warnings,
messages, etc. as does FC2, even though Synopsys directly states in
their manuals that this is supported.
Last summer, the Synopsys FC2 marketing team came in here as part of
their marketing "We care about FPGAs" blitz. This was right after last
year's SNUG'01 when FC2 did not even have a booth at R&D night."
- Andy Jones of Lockheed Martin
"We use Synplicity and it works well for us for FPGAs. I would like to
see more elaborate features for setting timing constraints in
Synplicity. At the time we tried FPGA Express was extremely slow
compared to Synplicity."
- Karl Kaiser of Resonext
"No contest, Synplicity gives me the best results."
- Tom Moxon of Moxon Design
And to be more current, I could flood you with more recent Synplicity user
praise taken directly from the 2003 DAC Trip Report that was published
2 months ago, but I think you get the idea.
On a goof, I grepped "Precision" and "Leonardo" (Mentor's tools) in the
2003 DAC Trip Report and at http://www.deepchip.com/items/dac03-21.html
I humorously found:
"I have been using Synplify / Synplify Pro for the past three years for
FPGA synthesis. I have compared synthesis results against Mentor
Leonardo, but the evaluation was done in June of 2001, and no
comparisons have been done recently.
That comparison of Synplify Pro against Leonardo (HDL designer - prior
to release of Precision) showed 20 to 30% better resource packing with
Synplify Pro over Mentor, with timing estimates about 10% better."
- Michael Dabb of Avocent
"We used Synplify most recently for development targeted at the Xilinx
VirtexII-Pro line. The only problems I recall were issues with getting
RAMs included in the right places and building the connections to the
RocketIO (high-speed serial) blocks.
The performance of the tool was phenomenal - certainly faster than ASIC
synthesis. And the results were at least 10-20% better in area than
Leonardo, Xilinx, and Quartus (we've used all three)."
- Carl Ramey of StarGen Semiconductor
OK, so from where I'm standing, there's no way in hell that Mentor/Exemplar
is now in a dead heat with Synplicity in the FPGA synthesis market. Every
external user voice I hear says it ain't so.
And this is where the story gets interesting.
I'm about to issue a public call for Mentor/Exemplar FPGA synthesis users
and one of two scenarios is going to play out:
Scenario 1: Wally's Revenge
Synplicity was founded by ex-Mentor synthesis gurus Ken McElvain and Andy
Dauman. For Wally Rhines, the CEO of Mentor, it's a wee bit embarrassing
to have his ex-employees best him in a market that Mentor used to own.
If it turns out that Synplicity sales really did drop 31% while Mentor
sales remained steady in FPGA synthesis, Wally gets to laugh as he watches
Bernie Aronson, the CEO of Synplicity, do his best imitation of the
Help-I've-Fallen-And-I-Can't-Get-Up lady. Sweet, sweet revenge....
Scenario 2: Bernie's Vindication
It's embarrassing to have Dataquest publically state you've slipped 31%
while your biggest rival (Mentor) held steady. If you can publically
catch Mentor lying or exaggerating here, it means that Bernie gets to
laugh while Wally does his best explaination of a "wardrobe malfunction"
to the entire industry. Sweet, sweet vindication...
Which scenario will play out? The acid test (as far as I'm concerned) is
whether or not we can find lots of Mentor/Exemplar/Precision/Leonardo
users to speak up. Lots of real, live Mentor/Exemplar users speaking up
about using the tool (thus matching the Synplicity user enthusiam) means
Wally's Revenge. Hardly anyone speaking up about actually using Mentor
FPGA synthesis means Bernie's Vindication.
So, if you're currently using Mentor/Exemplar/Precision/Leonardo, please
send me an email. Did you intentially buy the Mentor tool? Or did you
just get it as part of a ModelTech package deal and you really don't use
it? What FPGAs do you synthesize in Exemplar/Precision/Leonardo? In your
opinion how does Mentor FPGA synthesis stack up against Synplicity? Given
the choice, would you buy Mentor/Exemplar/Precision/Leonardo again today?
Why or why not?
I'll publish what I get or don't get from users in the next ESNUG! :)
-----
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.
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