( ESNUG 461 Item 4 ) -------------------------------------------- [01/31/07]
Subject: Wrong! Denali is NOT the only company offering good memory models
> 24.) Denali (booth 3851) -- yea, they have a monopoly on memory models.
> Who cares? I'm there to pester Kevin Silver so I can get a ticket
> to their infamous DAC party. "Come on, Kevin, pleeeease...."
>
> - from http://www.deepchip.com/gadfly/gad072006.html
From: Rick Munden <munden=user domain=freemodelfoundry not balm>
Hi, John,
This is the second time you have said that Denali is the only company
offering memory models. Once again, not true! My company, the Free Model
Foundry, has a full range of memory models. And we don't stop there. We
have models of interface components, timing components, a few processors
and DSPs, and of course all those pesky little TTL and ECL parts. All in
all, our models currently support more than 10,000 orderable part numbers;
and by support, I mean full function and full timing including things like
initialization and refresh.
So, why don't you know about us? It probably has a lot to do with our
marketing budget -- until recently, there hasn't been one. You see, our
business model is a bit different from what you normally find in EDA.
We give away our models as source code (VHDL or Verilog), for free.
I can hear you saying now, "So how long can you keep that up?" Well, we've
been doing it for 11 years so far, and there is still no end in sight. FMF
models are downloaded by 2,000-3,000 companies every week.
It all started in the early '90s when Russ Vreeland, Luis Garcia, and I were
at TRW. We were designing low volume, high speed boards for the government.
Debugging prototypes was too slow, difficult, and expensive. We wanted to
simulate the designs but the only models available were from LAI. Those
models were encrypted and could only be leased.
Encrypted models would be fine if simulations always proved that the design
worked the first time. Of course, if you could do that twice in a row, you
wouldn't think you needed to run simulations any more. The problem comes
when the simulation says it won't work. Then you have to figure out if the
mistake is in your netlist, your understanding of how a part works, or in
one of your models! An encrypted model doen't help with 2 out of 3 here!
In the cases where the problem turned out to be in a model, after much
convincing, the vendor would tell us it would be fixed in the next release.
So we would all go on vacation for 2 months -- not.
We decided that providing simulation models should be the responsibility of
the same companies that are selling the parts. Back in 1994, that was a
tough sell. The only non-proprietary simulation language at that time was
VHDL and people were still learning how to use it.
Fast forward to 2007. Many, if not most, IC vendors understand that models
are as necessary as datasheets. Some try to create the models internally,
some hope another company will do it for them (and charge their customers
for the privilege of using them), and some (the more enlightened, of course)
hire us. Since we get paid for writing models, we don't need to charge
anyone for using them. Once we have modeled everything, we will lose our
revenue stream but, I don't think that will happen.
In the mean time, tell everyone they can get free models of off-the-shelf
digital components at http://www.FreeModelFoundry.com. If they don't find
what they need -- ask. If they work for an IC vendor and need models
created, go to http://www.ModelFoundryServices.com.
- Rick Munden
Free Model Foundry Sunnyvale, CA
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