( ESNUG 348 Item 18 ) -------------------------------------------- [3/30/00]

Subject: ( ESNUG 346 #15 )  ...But Argon Broke O-in, Broke EMACS, Broke DC

> Ouch.  We had Kurt Baty at my place of employment pushing the 0-in tool
> with disastrous results, until new management decided that enough was
> enough and dumped it. 
>
> Some of us could not really figure out why he kept pushing it.  Turned
> out that Kurt Baty was a primary investor and technical advisor at 0-in
> and that's why we were using it in the first place.  We continued to use
> it despite continuous setbacks even though there was a great effort by
> our team to make our design 0-in friendly. 
>
>     - Rui DosSantos
>       Argon Networks                             Littleton, MA


From: Jerry Lampert <jerry@argon.com>

John,

Ouch, indeed.  I am responding to some comments made by a co-worker in ESNUG
Post 346.  I feel that I owe it to Kurt Baty and to 0-In to clarify a few of
the statements that were made that weren't quite on the mark.

When the two founders of Argon, both of whom have software backgrounds, were
starting the company, they called on Kurt to get his take on the feasibility
of the project and to try to recruit him.  Kurt's reaction was that design
verification would be one of the project's biggest problems and that such an
ambitious schedule could not be met by traditional means.  And so, the 
result was that all three agreed that Argon would be betting that 0-In would
provide the vehicle to beat a traditional design flow.  The co-founders knew
we'd be working with (pre-)alpha code, knew that at 0-In's stage of
development they'd be getting as much from the effort as Argon, and knew
completely about the level of Kurt's financial involvement/interest in 0-In.

Our two biggest chips are over an order of magnitude larger than the last
chip I did.  Our "small" chip is only 3 times as large as my last chip.
Well guess what?  We broke the 0-In tool.  Guess what else?  We broke
Synopsys, we broke emacs, and I don't even want to describe the carnage we
caused with our ASIC vendor.  But you know what?  We worked with all of
these tool vendors to get by these problems, and in the end, all of us
benefited.  This seems to me to be the normal mode of operation when you're
designing an ASIC that is out on the edge.  0-In didn't bill Argon, and
Argon didn't pay 0-In, but then again, neither company walked away with
nothing.  We're further ahead of schedule than we would have been without
0-in and 0-in got some very serious debugging.  Classic win-win (as much as
one can with a chip design that breaks all conventional EDA tools.)

    - Jerry Lampert
      Argon Networks, Inc.