( ESNUG 323 Item 1 ) ---------------------------------------------- [7/22/99]
Subject: Mentor CEO Wally Rhines Gloats On Calibre / Denies Renoir Rumors
> The technology and integration leader at this years DAC for physical
> verification was Mentor's Calibre. They have finally taken a lead
> position in the marketplace and should not face any major competitors
> for dealing with large designs (over 500K devices) mixed hierarchy
> and mixed design methodology devices for the next 3-4 years. They
> have a number of nice integration issues with the product that make
> it very attractive -- including a standardized verification language
> that extends to PDR verbiage as well as verification code. This
> standard language is Mentor product independent -- that is their old
> tools, current tools, and new tools will read the same decks so there
> is no legacy data problem on old tech files. Additionally, they have
> run-time optimization of the run decks, which allows for multiple
> styles of run set development to still result in high performance
> verification runs. Politically, Mentor had some major coups -- they
> attracted several very high up technical people from the Avanti
> Hercules program to aid the propagation of the Calibre program.
> ( http://www.mentorg.com )
>
> - an anon engineer
From: [ Wally Rhines, CEO of Mentor Graphics ]
John,
Glad you've finally heard the good news over here at Mentor about Calibre.
As you recall, I told you about it two years ago at SNUG in San Jose. (I
recall you weren't much persuaded at the time because you didn't know what
physical verification was, so allow me the opportunity to gloat a little.)
Calibre has won corporate standardization at 19 of the world's 25 top IC
manufacturers, the majority of the world's top pure play foundries, and all
top Japanese IC companies. (That's folks like HP, AMD, LSI, VLSI, Sony,
Samsung, TI, Nokia, Motorola, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Philips, Sun, UMC, TSMC
and a bunch more. I could go on for another couple of paragraphs of
customer names but that's probably over the top.)
According to Dataquest, Calibre captured 25.3 percent of the physical
verification market in 1997. By our own estimates (Dataquest hasn't
published for the year yet; we're looking forward to their expected August
release), the 1998 growth rate of the Calibre tool suite exceeded 200
percent, while the overall market growth for physical verification grew at
12 percent.
We're not standing still either. We just announced in June that Calibre's
next-generation technology -- the integration of Reticle Enhancement
Technologies including Optical Process Correction (OPC) and Phase Shift
Masking (PSM). We've already had success with this at Advanced Micro
Devices and Hitachi.
> "A [ Mentor ] Renoir developer told me they're being (or about to be)
> re-deployed on other products. Renoir will be placed into maintenance
> only mode. This is how it was told to me. Do I believe it? I did
> express some incredulity at the time, but EDA is a funny business. Maybe
> the bundling of MTI-Exemplar-Renoir is nothing more than a visit to the
> Last Chance Saloon." ( http://www.renoir.com )
John, I think Dr. Evil shagged you on this one. Renoir is doing very well;
we've moved to #1 market position, though we're going to have to wait on
Dataquest for the new numbers to verify that.
We saw 54 new customer wins with Renoir in Q2 (all non-academic). Big Q2
wins included that really big silicon partner of Microsoft that we can't
name, Litton Systems, Alcatel, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Marconi
Avionics, Matra Bae Dynamics and I-O Sensors Inc. Repeat orders came from
Ericsson and Nokia.
Of course, perhaps the best measure of success is that we're growing the
organization, we are currently recruiting for additional new positions in
Engineering, Documentation, QA, Technical Marketing and Marketing. Point
anybody interested our way! (Well, except Dr. Evil and Mr. Bigglesworth.)
- Wally Rhines, CEO
Mentor Graphics
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