( ESNUG 330 Item 1 ) --------------------------------------------- [9/30/99]
Subject: ( ESNUG 329 #1 ) How The Ambit 80% Price Cut Effects Buy Choices
> You've no doubt heard the news that Cadence has slashed the price of Ambit
> BuildGates to $25k. My question is: with Synopsys effectively raising the
> price of Design Compiler, and many testimonials that BuildGates is as good
> or better than DC, why stay with DC? Is there anything that DC can do
> that BuildGates can't?
>
> - Brian Walkington while on contract at Hewlett-Packard
From: Paul Borsetti <pborsetti@enikia.com>
John,
We are a small company just starting an ASIC design group. Most of us have
lots of experience in using Synopsys (I have used it since the early 90's).
We had Cadence in a couple of days ago and I must say that they caught our
ear with Ambit. It is hard for us to ignore the price -- but I am really
scared about leaving Synopsys. Can you give us some advice please? An EDA
mistake for this company could result in a disaster -- and I am scared.
- Paul Borsetti
Lead ASIC Design Engineer
Enikia Corporation Piscataway, NJ
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: [ message #993 by 'Z. Marcisz' on the Yahoo! SNPS board ]
I've been an Ambit salesperson from the early days and am no longer with
Cadence. Here's my 2 cents on the Ambit product and what the latest Cadence
annoucement means:
1) Ambit had a clear lead in both design size capacity, runtime and
area/timing results. With DC 99XX, SNPS has closed this gap and both
tools are about on par with each other. Ambit holds an edge with it's
higher capacity and built-in static timing engine. At $25K it compares
very well to a $125K+ solution from SNPS.
2) We (almost) never lost a deal to SNPS when competing for business at
new startups. When designers benchmarked the two tools, we
traditionally won. Stratum One, Maverick Networks, Monterey Design,
Amber Networks, etc. all picked Ambit over DC. Again, this $25K price
point will make these deals a slam dunk in the future.
3) We had a tougher time with established SNPS accounts. The main reason
was switching costs. It's hard to displace thousands of lines of
scripting and the expertise with DC. The new price point will do one
of two things in these accounts: 1) give the CAD Mgrs a huge hammer for
getting the best discount out of SNPS or 2) if SNPS doesn't want to
drop their shorts, the users will switch to Ambit. They'll get great
technology, support and much better price. Either way, CDN will win.
4) PKS is out there and VERY real. A number of my accounts were beta
sites and the results look very compelling for high speed designs
and/or sub .18u technologies.
SNPS is about 6-8 months behind with it's counter punch -- PhysOp. We're
still not sure where they going to get the P&R technology for this product.
Given that 30+% of SNPS revenues come from DC, I think this aggressive move
by CDN will impact SNPS' DC revenues and create a great upgrade path for CDN
users to PKS.
- [ message #993 by 'Z. Marcisz' on the Yahoo! SNPS board ]
|
|
