!!! "It's not a BUG, 
/o o\ / it's a FEATURE!" (508) 429-4357
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\ - / INDUSTRY GADFLY: "Herman vs. Holmes"
_] [_
by John Cooley
Holliston Poor Farm, P.O. Box 6222, Holliston, MA 01746-6222
Last week I was at my desk in one of those engineering "fogs" where all
I could see and think was project, project, project, project, project,
project, project. (Nothing else exists when I'm that mode. Nothing.)
My phone rang.
I ignored it.
After a few more rings, I automatically picked up and without thinking
said: "Hello, this is John Cooley..."
It was one of those Wall Street guys looking for my take on some news.
But what he asked was so unexpected, it trashed my concentration.
"What? Huh? Is this some sort of joke? Did Jay Vleeschhouwer put you
up to this? I'm going to kill Jay.", I said frustrated.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Jay? No! No, it's legit news. I emailed you the Yahoo link on it an
hour ago, but you hadn't yet responded", said the voice on the phone.
I went to the link.
Holy shit! In a weird very short press release Intel had *publically*
named Synopsys as its "Primary EDA Supplier"! What the hell??!!
"I wanted to get your reaction. It's common knowledge Intel uses Synopsys
software, right? So this is nothing news, right?"
Intel using Synopsys was no secret, but from where I sit this odd little
press release was still big news. Here's why:
1.) Doing business with Intel is like doing business with The Sopranos;
the first rule of Intel or the Mafia is that you're not allowed to
tell anyone that you're doing business with them. (It's one of
their nutty Only-The-Paranoid-Survive policies.) If an EDA CEO
even *hints* publically that Intel uses his tools, he very seriously
risks losing all or a big chunk of his Intel sales.
I remember being on a panel with Rajeev Madhavan. In passing, I
mentioned Intel by name on a Magma technical question. The first
words out of Rajeev's mouth were something like: "I just want to
go on record here that *you're* the one who mentioned Intel, John,
not me, ..." and then he said it *again* and then he went on to
answer the tech question. Rajeev's strange double opening was
instinctual CYA to appease the moody Intel underworld bosses.
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. What happens in Intel,
had better stay in Intel -- or else!
2.) For the financial weenies, ever since its IPO in 1992, Synopsys was
the very model of reliability because it ALWAYS hit its estimates.
Always. Always. Always. That was until Q3 of 2004, where after
a 51 quarter, 12.5 year run, Synopsys missed its estimates for the
first time in its history. It was ugly. EE Times reported Aart
effectively saying in his conference call that "customers were
delaying tool purchases to get last-minute discounts" and that
Synopsys "decided not to cave in to discounting" and that Aart had
specifically said: "we don't want to compromise the pricing of our
new technology." SNPS shares dropped 31 percent and less than a
week later 3 different law firms filed shareholder class-action
lawsuits against Aart. (I told you it was ugly!) It took over a
year for that legal bullshit to clear.
And what *one* company big enough to hurt the SNPS bottom line was
the one *rumored* to have pulled this last-minute maneuver to get
deep discounts on Design Compiler, VCS, PrimeTime, and DesignWare?
And talk about brass balls. To protect his prices, Aart played
"chicken" with that one company, he then called that one company's
bluff, and then he publically and personally took the hit like a
man -- all instead of caving in to that one company! Whoa!
3.) The one thing Cadence Corporate Marketing hyped over & over again
when Mike Fister became Cadence's CEO was his Intel pedigree. Hell,
the guy had 17 years there which culminated in the Itanium and Xeon
product lines. And with Fister came a mamba line of new Intel people
to Cadence. Jim Miller, Ajay Malhotra, Craig Johnson, Chip Burczak,
Debi Muchow, Nimish Modi, Ilana Golan, Donald Telian, Saghir Shaikh,
etc. (I know this because of the many EDA veterans who were replaced
by Intel people. For a while there, the only sure way to get a job
at Cadence was to tell them what Intel facility you worked at.)
Heck, I'm fairly certain if you caught Mike Fister between trying on
his $1,800 Testoni shoes and his asking to borrow your Grey Poupon,
he'd also agree he's Intel through-and-through. "Even my chauffer
is ex-Intel, along with my butler, my personal trainer, my gardener,
both my upstairs and downstairs maids, all 4 chefs, my Lear jet
pilot, and even my pool boy are all ex-Intel. Oh, wait! I think the
garbage man is ex-AMD. We naturally keep an eye on him because of
that. You can't trust anything AMD." is what Fister might say.
So, putting #1, #2, and #3 above together, here's why it was big news.
First off, the Intel no-EDA-endorsements-whatsoever paranoia in #1 makes it
inherently surprizing. It's like Ralph Nadar suddenly now endorsing GM's
new Buick Enclave SUV's -- that's not supposed to happen! Huh?!
Secondly, the you-can't-bamboozle-money-out-of-Aart in #2, means SNPS made
a boatload of cash on this Intel deal. (That rumor of Aart squaring off
with "that one company" in Q3/2004 proves this point even more.)
Thirdly, with all the Intel-Cadence connections in #3, WTF???? If anyone
was going to pull this off with Intel, it *should* have been Mike Fister's
new and improved Cadence -- NOT a nerdy EDA-centric Synopsys! WTF???
Taken altogether, in my book that terse little nothing press release spoke
volumes about today's Synopsys, Cadence, and Intel.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
"Hold on there, John. You're just skewing to Synopsys. Cadence has a
similar supplier deal with Freescale -- isn't this just the Synopsys
equivalent of that deal?", Mr. Wall Street blurted back on the phone.
Even to get to 32 nm, Freescale's R&D has had to team up with Chartered,
Infineon and Samsung in the IBM fab alliance. Intel is happily working
on its own 32 nm alone. Freescale's gone private and is focused on
cost-cutting and stream-lining. Their new private equity owners loaded
Freescale with $9.4 billion worth of long term debt that somehow has to
be paid off. In contrast, Intel is a technology & money machine that's
more obsessed with crushing AMD than anything else.
Using the last know public 10-Ks for both (2005), we're talking about
a $5.8 billion Freescale vs. a $38.8 billion Intel.
If this is a bragging contest between Peewee Herman vs. John Holmes, my
money's on Holmes every time. :)
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
I already know the Who, What, When and Where about the Intel-Synopsys deal;
the next time Synopsys Corporate Marketing screws up and mistakenly lets me
have 10 minutes alone with Aart, my first question to him will be "Please
tell me exactly HOW'd you get Intel to do this 'primary EDA supplier' deal?
And WHY did they do it? How'd you finagle that bagel?"
-----
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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