!!! "It's not a BUG, 
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\ - / INDUSTRY GADFLY: "You Should Hear What I Hear"
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by John Cooley
Holliston Poor Farm, P.O. Box 6222, Holliston, MA 01746-6222
Before I went to DAC this year, I thought it might be fun to bring along a
small notebook and write down every Synopsys or Magma related rumor, side
comment, or tidbit of gossip I heard before, during, or after DAC. Here's
every wild story and half-baked theory I heard (or overheard) plus what
I could find out about their veracity. It's some fun reading. Enjoy!
rumor: The web site ICcompiler.com automatically aliases to Magma-DA.com.
fact: True. I personally asked Rajeev about ICcompiler.com at DAC and
he said that Magma had wanted to call one of their own products
"IC Compiler" in 2005, but Synopsys beat him to the name. Rajeev
said, with a big grin on his face, that he's willing to sell the
ICcompiler.com domain to Synopsys if the price is right.
rumor: Synopsys VP/CTO/GM Raul Camposano to leave Synopsys end of August.
fact: True. Or after talking to sources I trust, *I* believe this rumor
is true. The only tricky thing is the leave date might be off and
no one has a good fix as to where Raul is going. "My guess is
he's going to do an ESL start-up," said Gary Smith of Dataquest.
"Raul's a guru in it. He wrote the book on HW/SW co-design in
1996 called 'Design Automation For Embedded Systems'. It's still
used as a reference today 10 years later." In addition, from my
sources it's clear Raul's leaving by his own choice (i.e. he's not
being kicked out because he lost some internal power struggle.)
I'd laugh if, after all this, Raul was going over to Magma.
rumor: Magma put out 24 press releases the month of DAC because their
VP of Corporate Marketing, Milan Lazich, was behind on his
annual press release quota.
fact: False. Magma only put out 20 press releases in July. To this
rumor Milan replied tongue-in-cheek: "Ya got me -- Rajeev and
Roy have me on a quota, so I got creative to make my number. In
the dead of night I made up names of products that sounded neat
and wrote press releases to announce them ... now I'm working
on some press releases for next week; we're trying to buy the
Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Paris Hilton might become our new CTO, and
we're acquiring Google. And that's just on Wednesday."
rumor: Last week Synopsys laid off 10% of its workforce globally, with
most of the cuts being in North America.
fact: Probably false. Lay off 400 now unhappy ex-Synopsys employees
and not one of them emails me? Not likely. In addition, there
is some sort of legal requirement that Synopsys would have to
issue a press release for such a large layoff because this would
materially affect the company. To boot, Wall Street absolutely
loves layoffs; they cause a stock to rise -- which is even more
of a sick incentive to issue such a press release -- which they
didn't. The Big 4 are all in a simultaneous fire & hire mode.
My guess is it's the background radiation of employee turnover
fueling this rumor. Or the shorts playing manipulation games.
rumor: The CEO of TSMC spoke at the Magma DAC Analyst & Press dinner
for 45 minutes because he secretly owns Magma founder's stock.
fact: False. Ed Wan, the senior director of design service marketing
at TSMC spoke at Magma's DAC Analyst & Press dinner and it was
no special favor to Magma. Google "Edward Wan TSMC" and you'll
see he speaks for Cadence, Synopsys, Mentor, Apache, Arm, Blaze,
Kilopass, AWR, Virage, Altera, the X Initiative, Optimal, Ponte,
ClearShape, Prediction, Anchor, Aprio, along with Magma. So no
special treatment for Magma here. I know of no way to find out
if Rick Tsai, CEO of TSMC, owns any Magma shares.
rumor: Rajeev was fined $20,000 by the U.S. District Court for speaking
about the Synopsys-Magma lawsuit in the Cooley Does Rajeev video.
fact: I asked Rajeev about this at DAC. He said it was not true, but
he had "a good idea of who made up that rumor". Actually, I was
hoping he'd say it was "patently false", but he didn't... :(
rumor: Magma has, or is about to, acquire Jasper DA.
fact: False. Kathryn Kranen, CEO of Jasper, said this rumor was
"interesting, but wrong." In addition, if you closely watch the
Cooley Does Rajeev video, you'll see Rajeev very heavily hints
that Magma is working on its own formal verification tool.
rumor: Aart put a security guard in the aisle between his Synopsys DAC
booth and the adjacent Magma DAC booth because he was paranoid
about Magma employees secretly eavesdropping in on the private
conversations going on in the Synopsys DAC booth.
fact: False. While it was odd that the Synopsys and Magma DAC booths
were right next to each other at DAC, at no time did I ever see
a security guard anywhere near or between neither booth.
rumor: Do you know any actual Magma ATPG and memory BIST users? They
made a big noise about these 1-2 years ago, but lately the Magma
test people have disappeared from test conferences & workshops,
and I don't know anyone who knows anyone using Magma test tools.
fact: Unknown. To be honest, I can't think of one actual Magma test
user. I know plenty of Synopsys and Mentor test users, with a
few Cadence guys thrown in plus an occassional LogicVision user,
but I can't think of one Magma test user. I do have one source
who reports that Magma R&D people don't seem to be at the test
conferences & workshops, though.
rumor: When the DAC musical group Full Disclosure plays the song
"These Boots Are Made For Walking", Aart dedicates it (off
microphone so the audience can't hear) to Rajeev's downfall.
fact: "But we've never, ever played that song!," shouts Gary Smith of
Dataquest & who happens also to be a member of Full Disclosure.
"For Christ's sake, we're a BLUES band! If it's ain't blues,
we are not going play it!" Gary also indicated that dissing
Rajeev was not Aart's style.
rumor: Wally Rhines, CEO of Mentor, is secretly cheering on Synopsys
in the Magma lawsuit but only so it financially wounds Magma
enough so Mentor can acquire Magma (sort of like how the Cadence
lawsuit wounded Avanti enough to make it acquirable to Synopsys.)
As a fallback position, if Magma survives the lawsuit intact,
Mentor plans to acquire Sierra. Mentor is already working
closely with Sierra to prepare for this contingency.
fact: Unknown. Although it sounds plausible (like most rumors do),
only Wally can say what he thinks.
rumor: Mike Fister, CEO of Cadence, is secretly cheering on Synopsys
in the Magma lawsuit because he wants one less player in the
P&R business. Getting 1/2 a pie is better than 1/3 of a pie.
fact: Unknown. Although it sounds plausible (like most rumors do),
only Fister can say what he thinks.
rumor: Aart won't eat Indian food because of his dislike of Rajeev.
fact: This is too weird. OK, I've never seen Aart eat Indian food,
but I've also never seen Aart eat Mexican food either; so does
this mean he dislikes Pancho Villa, too? I seriously doubt
there's any merit to this rumor. Synopsys is 1/3 Indian and
1/3 Chinese. The only personal prejudice I've ever seen Aart
exhibit is a strong bias for technical excellence, regardless
of who is doing it (even if it's his rival's excellence.)
rumor: It's Synopsys policy that it won't hire ex-Magma employees. If
you work at Magma, you're forever poisoned in Synopsys eyes.
fact: Possible. While I know plenty of ex-Synopsys people working
at Magma, no recent ex-Magma-who-now-work-at-Synopsys people
come to mind. This could be a policy that's only in effect
until the Synopsys-Magma patent lawsuit is resolved; on advice
of the Synopsys Legal Department. I have no clear insight;
just a hunch. This rumor could be flat out wrong, too.
rumor: At the beginning of the lawsuit, Synopsys kicked Magma out of
the Synopsys InSync program; thus denying Magma access to the
golden standard PrimeTime static timing analysis tool.
fact: False. "Synopsys cut us off from PrimeTime access years before
the lawsuit," said Yatin Trivedi of Magma. "When our customers
saw the correlation between actual silicon and our own timer,
it eliminated any need for PrimeTime. Since then we've also
qualified our own crosstalk flow with the fabs & our customers.
It's now part of the TSMC and UMC Reference Flows, so we also
don't need PrimeTime-SI. Synopsys withholding PrimeTime didn't
hurt us, in fact it helped us. We developed our own statistical
timing now, Quartz SSTA, because of them."
I want to thank the EDA users and vendors who helped me with this column.
It was a lot of fun to gather, to analyze, and to show how crazy-mixed-up
the world of EDA rumors is. And if you know the "rest of the story" that
could clarify any of these rumors, please email me to clear things up, OK?
-----
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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