( ESNUG 439 Item 1 ) -------------------------------------------- [02/15/05]
Subject: Questions for Rajeev Madhavan, CEO of Magma
Q for Rajeev:
1) Was it necessary to start the argument with SNPS about the patents that
lead to the litigation?
2) You have boasted couple of times that you sold Ambit to CDN, were you a
part of Ambit when it was acquired in Aug.'98?
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Question for Rajeev Madhavan - CEO of Magma
Was it a mistake to send a patent-warning letter to Synopsys? Why or why not?
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To Magma: What's going on between Synopsys and Magma with all the law suits?
Who is telling the truth?
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Sure, ask Rajeev if he's had any second thoughts about having sent that
shakedown letter to Synopsys last summer and where he sees it all going
from here. :-)
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To Rajeev Madhavan - CEO of Magma
"why can't you work well with other EDA leaders?" E.g. Synopsys-Magma
lawsuit, Ambit fight with Prakash Bhalerao which resulted in Rajeev's exit.
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Ask Rajeev Madhavan if he's still committed to his previous batch of
new technology: Quartz Formal, Blast Rail, Blast Noise, even Blast Create.
If so, when will there be tapeouts?
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Rajeev Madhavan - CEO of Magma
I was in China for several business engagements and didn't see much of Magma
there: why? and what is Magma's China strategy?
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I would ask Rajeev if they have any plans to release their timing engine
free of charge (a rumor I heard once).
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Rajeev- Ask him about his market share growth slowing... He is
particularly sensitive to questions regarding his lack of power
management in regards to his tools or SNPS or CDN gaining share or
winning head to head bake-offs against LAVA. If you know of any
accounts that chose SNPS over LAVA and power mgmt was a factor, you
could get him to lose it.
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Please ask Rajeev if he is disappointed that Cadence bought Verisity?
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For Rajeev, your COBRA discussion on your earnings release made a big
splash. In our experience it takes about 2 years for a new EDA product to
produce any meaningful bookings, like Blast Create or Mentor's Calibre when
it was released. Is there some reason we should think yours will defy the
trend?
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To Rajeev: What is this "Cobra" thing...it seemed to miraculously appear
when Magma was on the ropes about its patents. Is this a distraction
technique? How can Magma ever displace PrimeTime or Calibre, which are
hardwired into most fabs?
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"How can you credibly claim to have this comprehensive, big new
toolset for 65 nm when you are so small?" When he claims to really have
done it, then ask him "Why aren't Cadence and Synopsys able to do that?"
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Q: Magma says their newest product called Cobra provides "interconnect
synthesis" breakthrough technology. How can it be breakthrough when
Google has more than 50 references to interconnect synthesis, dating as
far back as 1999, from IEEE, universities and others, like Synopsys, who
have already advanced this concept.
Q: You say that Cobra is the largest undertaking in EDA history, yet the
bug rate is on the rise for BlastFusion, what are you doing about it?
Q: Magma has made the claim that their new Cobra technology will be
sign-off driven and will offer standalone signoff tools. Isn't this a
direct shift away from your previous position of endorsing a
"correct-by-construction" strategy?
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Q1) Is there a benchmark compare Magma versus Synopsys front end
synthesis based on
- Final gate count
- Timing margin
- Power
Q2) Is test (DFT) insertion part of Magma flow ? if not, will this
capability on the road map ?
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Rajeev - Is Magma starting to sell point tools in addition to flows?
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Rajeev, Synopsys claims 90+% of tapeouts in 90 nm. With this figure,
Magma is not the majority supplier and not even close. Why such a low
market share when you have been competing head-to-head since .18? You
claim superior technology yet the market is not supporting your claim
in an advanced technology.
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Rajeev: Given that FPGAs are getting bigger and faster every month,
why won't they take over the market and make ASICs obsolete?
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I have been attending a training seminar at Magma. The majority of
employees that has passed in front of us appears to be foreign
nationals. Assuming that Magma is not unique I am curious what their
rate of hiring engineers with US citizenship is compared to the
industry average? Are there truly no US citizen engineers with similar
qualifications?
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Why are you designing your tools for monkeys instead of engineers?
Different circuits have problems at different process points so trying to
set up the "worst case" process corner is impossible. I have seen this
fail so many times it hurts. Any designer with a clue won't have a
problem but the monkeys are doomed.
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What is the status of Mojave? When are you announcing something about
performance vs. Calibre?
Are you talking with Silicon Canvas, Sagantec, Bindkeys, and other small
ones to group into a new big one that owns all the IC Design flow? If
yes, when should the user hope to see it?
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What will Magma do to compete with the Verification environments that
Synopsys and Cadence has ? Assertions/formal verification, system
modeling/sims ?
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I got a question to Rajeev Madhavan:
Magma recently released a statistical STA tool. Where can one get the
"statistics" that reflect the actual silicon variation? How can one get
the statistics from foundaries and in what format?
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What are the creative business models Magma has used to gain a foothold
in companies that have already "pre-spent" their EDA budgets with
multi-year commitments to Cadence and Synopsys?
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I just got back from Magma's 2 week "Boot Camp" training course.
It was a waste of time. The instructors were disorganized and read
from slides that were basically a copy of the tool's man pages. I'd like
to ask Rajeev Madhavan what incentive he might consider placing on the
FAEs teaching this course so they get their act together? As an 11 year
industry veteran this is the worst training I have ever attended.
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