( ESNUG 384 Item 4 ) -------------------------------------------- [12/06/01]
Subject: Customers Concerned About Synopsys And/Or Avanti Technical Support
From: "Brad Sonksen" <bsonksen@transdimension.com>
John,
I am not that concerned about Synopsys gaining to large a market share.
Avanti seems to be losing quite a bit of existing seats and also new
business lately due to performance and other usability issues. I am
mostly concerned that Synopsys will not support other Avanti tools as
fully as they would support a flow that goes through the Synopsys/Avanti
path.
- Brad Sonksen
Trans Dimension, Inc.
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John,
In general, we think it is good for several reasons:
1. Most of our tool flow is Synopsys and Avanti:
- Synopsys Synthesis, DC expert, PrimeTime, PathMill Plus,
DesignWare, TetraMax
- Apollo Place & Route, old Compass tools for Custom design
(schematic entry, layout, DRC, LVS), and HSPICE (StarSpice)
- Calibre for DRC, LVS, and ERC (Mentor)
2. It will help guarantee a clean flow (long term) between tools without
us trying to arbitrate who caused the problem. Also, it is our hope
that the merger will result in a clean database management system.
(Maybe the Milkyway database extension.) This helps solve RCS issues
and database flow issues.
3. The new company should be more stable and help resolve many of the
issues that have been facing Avanti. When buying new tools, the
question is always asked if we should invest further in Avanti tools.
4. Synopsys and Avanti have been working toward interoperability for some
time.
5. It appears that there is a good match between PhysOpt and Apollo as the
preferred design flow.
6. The company may be able to "package" tools when competing with
Cadence or Mentor (potential cost advantage.)
Negative points:
A. It is not clear if Synopsys will get a good nucleus of people both
internal to Avanti and AE's in the field to help support the Avanti
tools. There were already many problems for the small guy and this may
make it worse unless Synopsys invests in a new crew supported with good
training. We have been considering investing in "Master ToolBox" for
library characterization work, but have had a huge problem in good apps
support.
B. Integration of Avanti into Synopsys will take quite a while and it may
result in poorer short-term support (for the next year) before good
long-term support is put in place.
Please keep me anonymous.
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From: Kevin Tomasek <KTomasek@Zilog.com>
I think that it was a wise move on the part of Synopsys. They will have
access to a competent backend tool to make their current portfolio stronger.
In the long run I think that we will get better tools from Synopsys. The
key phrase here is 'long run'. Since they are the 500 lb gorilla which will
soon grow to 800 lb, I imagine they will become more difficult to deal with
(i.e. slower turns on fixes, more costly, generally more arrogant.)
As a user, I think it stinks. The Synopsys support is the most difficult,
of the vendors that I deal with, to use and get answers from.
- Kevin Tomasek
Zilog
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Hi John.
Call me anon.
Here's why this is a good (in fact, very very very good) change. In my
company we have different setups we use to support the different Synopsys
versions. We also have the same for Avanti.
Here's the list of setups we have for Synopsys (16 in all)
primetime/1999.10-4
primetime/1999.10-5
primetime/1999.10-prod
primetime/2000.05-1.prod
primetime/2000.05-prod
primetime/2001.06-BETA1Synopsys/1999.10
Synopsys/2000.05
Synopsys/2000.11
Synopsys/ECO
Synopsys/mc
Synopsys/tx_2000.11_SP1_prod
Synopsys/VSS1999.05-SIM1_dev
vcsp/4.2
vcs/5.1
vcs/6.0
And here's the list of setups we have for Avanti (75 in all)
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.1
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.2
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.3.2
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.3.2.pt
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.4.1
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.5
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.6
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.7
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.7.2
avanti/2000.2.patch4.preqa
avanti/99.2.3.3.0.8
avanti/99.2.3.3.0.EA9.2
avanti/99.2EA.22
avanti/99.4.3.3.0.13
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.1
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.2
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.3.2
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.4.1
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.5
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.6
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.7
avanti/2000.2.3.4.0.7.2
avanti/2000.2.patch4.preqa
avanti/99.2.3.3.0.8
avanti/99.2.3.3.0.EA9.2
avanti/99.2EA.22
avanti/99.4.3.3.0.13
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.1
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.2
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.3.2
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.4.1
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.5
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.6
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.7
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.7.2
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.patch4.preqa
avanti/solaris7/32bits/99.2.3.3.0.8
avanti/solaris7/32bits/99.2.3.3.0.EA9.2
avanti/solaris7/32bits/99.2EA.22
avanti/solaris7/32bits/99.4.3.3.0.13
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.1
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.2
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.3.2
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.4.1
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.5
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.6
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.7
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.3.4.0.7.2
avanti/solaris7/32bits/2000.2.patch4.preqa
avanti/solaris7/32bits/99.2.3.3.0.8
avanti/solaris7/32bits/99.2.3.3.0.EA9.2
avanti/solaris7/32bits/99.2EA.22
avanti/solaris7/32bits/99.4.3.3.0.13
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.1
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.2
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.3.2
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.4.1
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.5
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.6
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.7
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.7.2
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.patch4.preqa
avanti/solaris7/64bits/99.2.3.3.0.EA9.2
avanti/solaris7/64bits/99.4.3.3.0.13
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.1
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.2
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.3.2
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.4.1
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.5
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.6
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.7
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.3.4.0.7.2
avanti/solaris7/64bits/2000.2.patch4.preqa
avanti/solaris7/64bits/99.2.3.3.0.EA9.2
avanti/solaris7/64bits/99.4.3.3.0.13
For many designs you need to have different versions of Avanti to go through
the flow. Synopsys is simply better at creating/maintaining/documenting EDA
tools, and IMHO with the addition of the deep-backend tools from Avanti,
they'll be rolling all over the competition in no time
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From: "Christoforos Kozyrakis" <kozyraki@eecs.berkeley.edu>
Anything that may improve the support system for Avanti tools (especially
the on-line support) is good news to me. :-)
- Chris Kozyrakis
U. Cal, Berkeley
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Hi John, keep me anon.
I am a customer of Avanti now. I hate the culture of selling tools, giving
maintainance money for supporting the tools, but using this money for
developing a slight variation of the same tool (add -XT or -BT or -GT) and
selling it again. These tools do cost a lot of money. So if I am paying
maintainance, I expect the improvement to be transferred to the customer at
almost no cost. So my point is, after the merger, I hope Synopsys won't take
similar development/marketing strategy.
Otherwise it is a good merger for developing a uniform flow.
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From: Leo Butler <lbutler@brocade.com>
Hello, John.
Do I think it's good news or bad news? I won't even venture a guess. But
I'll take a stab at what I hope will happen in an area that needs some
work -- support.
Asking questions and getting useful answers has typically worked much better
with Synopsys than Avanti. I'd like to see Avanti support work better. It's
been awhile since I needed to ask questions of Avanti on a regular basis, but
the single point of contact (your AE) and the involvement of your salesperson
in many requests for assistance was a weak point. With Synopsys, requests
for technical help are usually answered quickly via email with no need to
involve your AE or the salesperson in most cases. Overall, I prefer this
support mechanism.
It will remain to be seen whether or not the Synopsys and Avanti tools can
be made to work together even better than they do today, yet remain friendly
(at least sufficiently so) to other vendors' tools. A "grand unification"
into a single synthesis/physical implementaiton suite would be a step
backwards if third party point tools can't be inserted into the flow when
deemed necessary by customers.
- Leo Butler
Brocade
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From: Lu Dai <ldai@cisco.com>
Overall bad news. I felt Synopsys' customer service is getting worse as
its business gets better. With the acquisition, Synopsys surpasses Cadence
as the No. 1 EDA company. I'm afraid their customer service will go down
the drain. On the other hand, it's good to see Avanti survives as an
alternative to Cadence tools.
- Lu Dai
Cisco Systems
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