( ESNUG 321 Item 3 ) ---------------------------------------------- [6/8/99]
Subject: ( ESNUG 319 #8 ) User Disgust At Avant! Charging $47K For VeriLint
> Now Avant! has purchased InterHDL and sent a fax to all Verilint customers
> offering to "upgrade" the license to flexlm and remove the 27 minute timer
> -- all for only $10K and $7K in annual maintenance. This for a tool that
> originaly cost less than $10K. That's screw number 2. If you want to buy
> the tool new from Avant! the list is $47K!!! Screw 3. Sheesh, that's
> more than a verilog license. Who are they kidding? This thing is a
> SYNTAX checker.
>
> By the way: if you decide not to upgrade, they'll give you a permanent key
> for the old tool - forever locked to the machine you specify -- they'll
> never allow a future rehost! Screw 4.
>
> What a way to run a business.
>
> - [ I Am Sparticus ]
From: Tom Loftus <tloftus@hns.com>
John,
Although perhaps not quite as strongly as Sparticus, I also object to the
way Avant! is handling the InterHDL/Verilint "upgrade". We have three of
the hold time licenses and have found them useful in our design flow.
I have tried to explain to Avant! that the tool is not a $45K tool, but
they seem unmoved. I wonder how many of their customers are really going
to take them up on their offer to upgrade, and how many are going to go
with a permanent key, drop maintenance, and not give them another dime?
It is particularly annoying that they want to charge maintenance based on
the $45K price of the tool. This means our yearly maintenance would be
almost $7,000 --- what we paid for each license originally.
It looks to me like their strategy is to move their Verilint customer base
to their Nova-Explore-RTL product. This product requires you to run
interactively in a multi-window GUI type environment. Just like every
other EDA vendor, they want to have the Holy Grail of EDA Software. That
is, a tool that a designer is going to sit in all day long while doing code
development and debug. I don't think Nova-Explore-RTL is it.
- Tom Loftus
Hughes Network Systems
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: Andrew Frazer <Andy.Frazer@idt.com>
John,
Sparticus discussed two options to working with Avant! to handle our
existing Verilint licenses: get a permanent license or upgrade to a
non-timed FlexLM configuration.
While I would jump on the upgrade option ($10k to get rid of the 27-minute
timer and the Elan license manager), you should also consider the third
option: upgrading to their Nova-Explore-RTL. Nova-Explore-RTL is everything
that Verilint wasn't. It does more complete syntax and error checking,
has a 10X better user interface, and is scheduled to have some important
enhancements that I may not be able to discuss openly (so I'll keep my
mouth shut).
- Andy Frazer
IDT Santa Clara, CA
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: [ The Cat In The Hat ]
John - please sign me anon.
Funny how no one bought more than one copy of Verilint despite that 27
minute limitation -- you'd think they found a way to get around it or
something.....
Anyway - being a proponent of capitalism, I feel no more 'screwed' by
the outrageous prices charged by Avant! for Verilint than I do for the
prices Synopsys charges for <fill in the blank>. (Remember the good old
days when you could buy an entire suite from COMPASS and get change back
from your $100K?) Anyway, I think this will play out one of three
ways: Maybe Verilint is really worth the money, or maybe someone will
develop a competitor and sell it for less, or (more likely?) the Verilog
linting function will end up as LINUX-like freeware. Seems like
someone could write a basic linting tool that accepts "violations to
test for" specified in a user-friendly way, then we could all add tests
to it as desired. Perhaps some UNIX utility does something like this
already? I suspect that no one was motivated to do any of the above
when you could buy Verilint from nice people for only $7K, but now, we
shall see....
- [ The Cat In The Hat ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: [ The Cheshire Cat ]
John, Please keep me anonymous.
You can get around the 27-minute timeout for Verilint by establishing an
account "lintuser", giving everyone the password, and requiring everyone
to log in as "lintuser" to use Verilint.
- [ The Cheshire Cat ]
[ Editor's Note: This price gouging of charging $47K for interHDL's/
Avant!'s VeriLint may spur a real search for alternatives. The tool
that comes to mind for me is 'HDL LINT' from Veritools. 'HDL LINT'
sells for $3K a copy (and gets cheaper if you buy more copies) and is
said to run 700-800 lint checks. It has *no* cheesy usage timers
involved. Plus it has a Perl interface so users can customize it and
do style checking. (See http://www.veritools-web.com ) My question
is "has anyone used 'HDL LINT'? Is it a viable alternative?" - John ]
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