( ESNUG 529 Item 1 ) -------------------------------------------- [07/18/13]

Subject: Gary Smith, Jim Hogan, worst customers, Intel, Oasys, Ciranova




     




                DAC'13 Troublemaker's Panel in Austin, TX

     Gary Smith - Q: Who are the worst customer that an EDA company can
     sell to?  A: "They tend to be Asian companies that have no vision
     of the future.  Smart Asian companies like Mediatek know it's a
     bad idea to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.  It's Asian
     companies that don't care about the EDA industry and just want a
     fast buck and cheapest EDA price that are your worst customers."

     Jim Hogan - Intel is the worst customer that an EDA company can
     have.  They demand free engineering from the start-up and they'll
     beat you down in price.  Going to Intel is going into the whirling
     blades.  You're going to burn up all your cash to get their order
     and in the end you'll have an Intel-specific tool that you can't
     sell anywhere else.  You'll get trapped in that and God help you.
     Ciranova got burned by Intel.  Ciranova spent $35 million to keep
     Intel happy; ended up exiting to Synopsys for under $10 million.
     That's a bad return.

     Joe Sawicki - "Intel.  They are who they are."  They have their
     own design flow and their own problems.  If your EDA tool is
     mature enough to help them, then you won't go down a rat hole.
     They're not a bad customer -- if they were one of our customers.

     Joe Costello - Well Oasys can officially say that Intel uses them.
     They're an investor in Oasys.  Intel created some of the problems
     that Intel bitches about.  It made All-You-Can-Eat EDA deals and
     threw pricing over to an EDA purchasing guy who nags you down.
     They won't pay for new technologies and it hurts them.  Synopsys
     didn't buy Atrenta because it couldn't monetize Atrenta tools;
     customers would want them free as part of their package deal.

     Gary Smith - Years ago Intel came to me asking why EDA companies
     hated Intel so much.  My advice was for Intel to double what they
     paid the EDA vendors.  Intel realized that with cheap pricing
     they were killing off one their technology enablers by paying too
     little for EDA tools.  They doubled what they paid EDA vendors.

   !!!     "It's not a BUG,
  /o o\  /  it's a FEATURE!"
 (  >  )
  \ - / 
  _] [_     (jcooley 1991)