( ESNUG 450 Item 9 ) --------------------------------------------- [01/25/06]
Subject: Some colorful Q&A follow-up concerning the recent Synopsys Census
> Even with correct data, it still sucks to be Synopsys and Cadence.
>
> switching away from Synopsys: ####### 21%
> switching away from Magma: # 3%
> switching away from Cadence: ####### 19%
>
> I looked at the rest of the survey for some insights. ...
>
> - from http://www.deepchip.com/items/snug05-13.html
Q: Is there any way that you can determine from the data whether as
designers move to advanced process nodes there is a more significant
movement towards or away from any particular vendor? In other words,
should we expect any trend to get more noticeable as more people
switch to 90 nm and 65 nm?
- Jeff Echtenkamp of Broadcom
A: Yes, as you go down 90 nm, 65 nm, 45 nm, the data says you should
expect to see the P&R battle boil down to Synopsys vs. Magma. That
is, I've personally not heard from users of any sucessful Cadence
65 nm P&R designs. Cadence might have a sucessful 65 nm design or
two that they *floorplanned*, but none that I know they *P&Red*.
Conversely, Synopsys & Magma P&R are commonly mentioned at 65 nm.
"For the bulk of 65 nm and below, the battle is between Magma and
Synopsys," said Gary Smith of Gartner/Dataquest in SNUG 05 #13.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Q: Do you think that the new CDNLive conferences have taken many Cadence
tool users away from SNUG, and if so could it be responsible for skewing
the surveys as such: http://www.deepchip.com/items/snug05-08.html
Thanks for all the work on compiling these results. It's always a good
read and a topic of discussion in any company I have worked with.
- Mark Barry of Silicon & Software Systems
A: I very much doubt it. The SNUG conference and the CDNLive conference
are 6 months apart from each other -- so there's no schedule conflict.
Also, I've never heard of any Cadence or Synopsys employee excluding
a customer because they went to the rival's user group. (If anything,
Synopsys and Cadence would love to steal each other's customers!)
I think the survey results say it as it is. Users liked SNUG much better
than the olde ICU conference. I won't know how the new glitzy CDNLive
conference ranks vs. SNUG until I do my Cadence-vs.-its-rivals survey.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Q: Did the Synopsys people hit you upside the head with a sock full of
coal for doing this report?
- Jeff Pollak of Intrinsix Corp.
A: Nope, but I'm sure they'll thank you for giving them the idea! :)
Actually they seemed pretty OK with the Census. I do know that within
Synopsys each of the effected groups closely read their sections of the
Census (i.e. the Jupiter-XT guys read the Jupiter-XT section, the Astro
guys read the Astro section, etc.) as is to be expected.
Their VP of PR sent also me an email. "Synopsys always values honest
feedback from customers. We were particularly heartened to hear that
users appreciate our software support," he wrote along with thanking
me for doing the survey.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Q: Why were there so many anonymous replies this time around in the survey?
A: Fear of retribution from Synopsys. Here's a few of the user quotes:
- "Make Me Anon. Got too much comments from the purple last time. ;-)"
- "I can probably spend a whole hour telling stories about the way
Synopsys sales force behave, and it would not be pretty.
Please MAKE ME ANON."
- "They've historically set the gold standard. But Magma's integrated
tool package is an enormous advantage. For that reason I have to put
Synopsys slightly behind Magma. If my name appears in one of your
postings I'm a Dead Man -- please keep me Anon."
- "Make Me Anon. We have discontinued use of Design Compiler and have
switched to Magma and Synplicity. Synopsys is too expensive,
provides poor support, and does not service their customers well.
- "The functionality of Jupiter-XT was poor compared to Cadence-FE.
Synopsys sales have moved to "Indifferent" and have moved up the
management ranks and not at the engineering levels. BTW, John,
I'm a coward, so keep me anonymous."
- "Synopsys local support is mediocre at best. Delay tactics galore!!
Make Me Anon"
- "Make Me Anon. FPGA's are eating into the mid range of IC's and I
don't see Synopsys doing anything to compete in this space. A real
concern of mine for them."
- "Hell yes! Make me anon please!!! My company takes a dim view of
us mere engineers making comments, especially if the comments don't
match company policy!"
It's not just a fear of Synopsys retribution -- many who said *good*
things about Synopsys also wanted to be Anon, too, because they feared
retribution from Cadence/Mentor/Magma. It's an EDA thing.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Q: Do you do similar comprehensive examinations of Synopsys' competitors?
If not, I wonder if that is part of the Synopsys-hates-me fear that you
express in http://www.deepchip.com/items/snug05-22.html. If Cadence,
Mentor, etc., aren't put under the same microscope, can you blame
Synopsys for wanting to shoot the messenger?
- Bill Lenihan of Raytheon
A: Yea, if I was doing just a pick-on-Synopsys thing, I could see why they
would be pissed -- but I do all sorts of surveys across the industry.
Verification Census http://www.deepchip.com/posts/dvcon05.html
DAC Trip Report http://www.deepchip.com/posts/dac04.html
Cadence ICU Survey http://www.deepchip.com/posts/icu04.html
Magma User Report http://www.deepchip.com/items/0420-06.html
Tape-out Count http://www.deepchip.com/news/census.html
Tape-out Recount http://www.deepchip.com/news/recount.html
I'm not a pick-on-Synopsys guy, but let's-see-what's-really-happening
guy. Sometimes Synopsys looks good; other times they look bad.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Q: Very very interesting, especially as it matches 100% what I've been
seeing. Synopsys tools are good, but they are arrogant and inflexible
and time and time again it comes up that they just don't play nicely
with others. If they could solve that, then they'd do service to
themselves and their customers. Individual chaps are fine, but the
company culture seems to have been twisted at some point. Perhaps it
was from having a monopoly back in the good old DC days. I hope they
take this in the spirit it's intended. Did they?
Naturally, I'd like this to be anonymous.
A: So far I've recieved no ticking packages postmarked from Mountain View
yet. But since you're really asking a company culture question, the
only person qualified to speak on it for Synopsys is Aart, not me.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Q: Anon please. If you total the arrogance category, it is actually #1.
"What 2 or 3 things about Synopsys would you DEFINITELY change?"
have less bugs in releases: ######################### 25%
... ...
too much general arrogance: ############## 14%
sales & sales arrogance: ############# 13%
- from http://www.deepchip.com/items/snug05-19.html
This 27% arrogance total beats the 25% bug total at the #1 issue.
A: Actually, I think the Synopsys arrogance has become *less* of an issue
than in prior years. It came from owning a monopoly in RTL synthesis.
They've now been humbled because Get2chip seems to be at the early
stages of being viable. Plus the fact that Synopsys is now in the
brutal 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 P&R market that it wasn't in before. Synopsys had
to cut back on arrogance or it would lose customers to rivals.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Q: What do you think Synopsys customers *really* think about the litigation
with Magma?
- Ann Steffora Mutschler of Electronic News
A: What I've found is the majority (90%) of EDA users are generally too
swamped with work to track the specifics of the EDA lawsuit-du-jour,
but in this survey 10% of users mentioned it. Of that 10%, the bulk
sided with Magma.
"Dump the lawsuit with Magma, make up with Rajeev, and apologize
to my customers, and tell them I'm going to win their accounts
based on technical merits, and not FUD."
- from http://www.deepchip.com/items/snug05-13.html
But again, I think it's important to reiterate that 90% of users
simply didn't care one way or another.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Q: Keep me Anon. Inspite of data in favour of Magma, why is there no
TSMC reference flow on Magma track?
A: I'll have to ask the Magma folks that one, but as a first blush I'd
guess it's a political issue between the two companies. That is,
I *know* there are Magma users designing chips to be fabbed at TSMC.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Q: Please keep me anonymous. I work in the R&D dept of one of the big
three. I thoroughly enjoyed your insightful and witty SNUG 05 Census.
Did you get a sense of how many users are actually using DC's Ultra
optimization feature? I saw only one reference in the entire article.
A: I did see plenty of happy-with-XG comments for both DC and PhysOpt,
but not much popped out concerning Ultra. Doesn't mean much, though,
because I didn't ask about Ultra, so I shouldn't get much...
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Q: I manage the Cadence Worldwide customer survey. I've consistently
found your results and discussion to provide valuable insight into the
needs of engineers. Plus, there have been some powerful instances where
your results corroborate our customer feedback, both where we are doing
right by our customers and where we need to make further improvement.
As you probably know, survey feedback is sometimes discounted by
decision makers with the line "we don't know who that feedback is from."
It would help me to defend the credibility of your results/findings if
you would update your reader stats pages. The last stats page with
subscribers by company is from 4/10/02.
- Cindy Guyon of Cadence
A: Hi, Cindy. Your letter was my homework assignment over Christmas Break
to update those stats. It's in ESNUG 449 plus I keep a standing link
of all DeepChip stats at http://www.deepchip.com/stats.html.
It's nice to hear that your internal Cadence survey results match mine;
usually when I break bad news I get kicked around by the effected EDA
vendor(s) who do backstabing attacks on what I'm seeing. You're the
second confirmation I got. Gary Smith of Gartner/Dataquest jokingly
accused me of plagiarizing his data when I first spoke to him about the
Synopsys Census. One of my first "checks" was to tell Gary my measure
of the P&R markets. From my data I saw:
Synopsys P&R ############################# 44%
Magma P&R ################ 24%
Cadence P&R ##################### 31%
Gary Smith's 2004 marketshare data was:
Synopsys P&R ############################## 44.8%
Magma P&R ################# 25.5%
Cadence P&R ##################### 29.4%
And in general most of my other data roughly matches what the Gartner
2005 Market Trends reports, too. Hence Gary's plagiarism claims. :)
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Q: With the survey done, do you give SNPS a "buy", "hold", or "sell" rating?
A: I'm an electrical engineer, not a financial guy, so any stock rating I'd
give is utter gibberish. I'm absolutely the wrong person to ask this.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Q: Do you agree or disagree with the recent Synopsys and Magma assessments
by Tim Fox of Deutsche Bank?
A: Neither. In my world I only see what the hands-on users are saying about
specific EDA tools. I can tell you if users like or hate a tool and what
its issues are, but I have zero visibilty into the money that's passing
hands for the tools themselves. Anything financial is a Tim Fox question
which I'm exceptionally unqualified to answer. I'm a BSEE, not an MBA.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
> DAC 2005: Synopsys Marketing had 5 users present carefully prepared
> Powerpoint IC Compiler "success stories" at a DAC lunch.
>
> Nov. 2005: Synopsys Marketing puts out a press release with a vague
> 2 sentence quote from an Agere Director (who manages some
> engineers who run IC Compiler) saying they have a tapeout.
>
> - from http://www.deepchip.com/items/snug05-14.html
Q: Are you saying that those 5 users lied at the Synopsys DAC event? Are
you saying that the Synopsys-Agere tapeout press release is a lie?
A: My short answer is "yes", in my world they are lies.
My world is very simple. What I get directly from the hands-on EDA users
themselves I generally trust -- especially if a number of hands-on guys
are reporting the same thing. What I get from any other source is assumed
to be a misdirection or lie of some sort -- until it's been directly
confirmed by a *hands-on* user -- not a customer VP nor an EDA vendor's
press release, but only from the hands-on user.
I've found press releases to be rah-rah propaganda sheets put out by the
Corporate Marketing spin doctors. Press releases are purposefully cooked
to show only the overly simplistic happy-happy, joy-joy side of the story
with all the ugly issues & bugs conviently missing. Sometimes the people
quoted will later acknowledge they didn't even say what they're quoted as
saying in a press release. From the perspective of an engineer who has
to design chips that actually work on the real world, EDA press releases
are the single most unreliable source of info about the news, capabilties
and true status of a specific EDA tool. It's like trusting the tobacco
companies to tell you the truth about cigarettes. D'oh!
Why I distrust what happened at the DAC IC Compiler event was that I was
intentionally excluded from it. That was just weird. Usually at DAC the
marketing droids pester me to attend their user events. The Cadence
folks invited me to their Encounter DAC event. Rajeev himself invited me
to his DAC Magma Cobra event. Weirder still, Synopsys Marketing made it
a point to have me attend their IC Compiler user launch 3 months earlier
in March 2005 -- but not at DAC. Huh?
So my guess is that Synopsys Marketing was probably trying something they
know I'd catch, hence my exclusion. The IC Compiler benchmarks were done
on bogus test designs? Synopsys people and not the so-called "customer"
actually ran IC Compiler? The IC Compiler database breaks at 65 nm?
IC Compiler core dumps repeatedly? Some of their IC Compiler users were
thinking of switching to Magma? I don't know for a fact there was any
deception going on; it's just this odd behavior gives me the hunch it
was. And until the *hands-on* IC Compiler users speak up, I naturally
assume the worst. Past experience over many years with many different
and colorful EDA vendors has taught me this wisdom.
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