( ESNUG 535 Item 6 ) -------------------------------------------- [02/18/14]
Subject: New and Rumors on SNPS, Morris Chang, Apache, Tempus, Ivan Pesic
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY: Here's the latest news & rumors I've heard about EDA
and fabs. Feel free to comment/correct/scold anything!
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- SCOOP! -- Although neither companies have announced it yet, I've had
three spies say SNPS is buying the 300 employee $70 million Coverity,
a San Francisco based SW company which does enterprise-level static
code analysis tools and security testing for C, C++, Java and C#. A
few key Coverity rivals are Veracode, Klocwork, and Fortify Software.
 
If true, with 1,100 non-chip SW developer customers like Adobe, SAP,
EA, Sega, CERN, Novell, Raytheon -- this would signal a MAJOR shift in
where Aart sees future revenue growth for SNPS -- i.e. outside of EDA!
That is, SNPS will be like Wally's MENT selling a mix of best-in-class
and many-times-unrelated-but-profitable POINT TOOLS instead of Aart's
old focused our-one-flow-is-best-for-chips pitch. At one moment Aart
will be hawking optical lens SW, the next car wire-harness tools, the
next C++ and Java linters, the next emulation kits, and the next EDA
tools. SNPS is now taking a flea market strategy for growth -- which
they ironically used to give Wally grief for doing. :)
Since Coverity is a SW play, it should go for around 3X to 5X revenue,
or $210 M to $350 M to buy. Notable Coverity board members who are
known EDA people are Tony Zingale and Aki Fujimora of Cadence 1990's
fame. According to Forbes.com, Coverity was looking to IPO with
Goldmam Sachs and JP Morgan as their bankers.
[ Editor's Note: Exactly 36 hours after I published this story
about Coverity, Synopsys issued a press release saying they
acquired Coverity for $350 M net cash! I was right! - John ]
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- As a weird start of 2014, the China Post reports that the FSC, the
Taiwan equivalent of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission is
investigating "manipulations" of TSMC shares by stock traders posting
false reports that 83 year old TSMC Chairman Morris Chang was dead.
On January 9th TSMC shares dropped 2.8%, but the stock price recovered
after Chang told news reporters:
"Please let everybody know that I am in good health by running
a big, big picture of me."
- TSMC Chairman Morris Chang
at a conference of college presidents in Taiwan to quell these rumors.
Taiwanese lawmakers urged the FSC revoke the trading licenses of the
traders and financial institutions found responsible.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- Exactly as spies predicted 2 months ago on DeepChip in ESNUG 528 #10,
Andrew Yang, CEO of Apache, is leaving Ansys.
  
From 2 months ago:
"Andrew Yang is also staying until June for his $10 M earnout."
- rumor quoted in ESNUG 528 #10
From an Ansys press release 8 days ago:
"Dr. Yang will remain working as part of the ANSYS management
team through August 1, 2014."
- Ansys press release (02/10/14)
OK, so they predicted June -- and Andrew's leaving turned out to be
4 weeks later -- I'll still take that as an accurate prediction! :)
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- On the technical side, Cadence R&D has been happily and very eagerly
anticipating this Apache downfall with:
"We've been working with Cadence Voltus, their new
unannounced cell-based static/dynamic digital power
analysis tool that replaces their present Cadence EPS
tool and directly competes against Apache/Ansys Redhawk."
- http://www.deepchip.com/items/0534-01.html
Looks like the SPICE/IR-drop/power analysis pendulum might be swinging
back to Lip-Bu if Andrew's mystery replacement can't counter CDNS!
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- FUN QUOTE
"Actually the Arteris-Qualcomm deal was closer to $260 million."
- Anon source on $224 M quoted in ESNUG 528 #5.
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- Last week at his annual sales conference Ajoy Bose, CEO of Atrenta,
told 300+ employees that Atrenta's 2013 revenues grew roughly 12% for
the year -- from $41 M to $46 M and Atrenta's annualized bookings grew
a whopping 52% -- 1/3rd of which came from 37 new customer logos.
Not bad considering back in October Aart de Geus told Wall Street
that for FY 2013 SNPS only got "low to mid-single-digit" (i.e. 2%?)
organic revenue growth for all of his EDA tools. Congrats Ajoy!
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- FUN FACTS
DVcon User Attendance
2003: ########################## 517
2004: ######################### 510
2005: ############################ 561
2006: ################################ 650
2007: ################################### 707
2008: ######################################## 802
2009: ################################# 665
2010: ################################ 637
2011: ##################################### 749
2012: ########################################## 834
2013: ########################################### 866
Word is there will be 34 companies exhibiting this year at DVcon'14
and they had 158 user papers submitted (with only 39 accepted!)
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- To counter the Cadence Tempus threat to Synopsys PrimeTime in the STA
game, sources have told me that SNPS has been hinting to certain big
customers that it's been working on "PrimeTime II" which -- as you can
guess -- has many of the exact same features Cadence Tempus has!
 
If true, I suspect that Aart will announce "PrimeTime II" as part of
his upcoming keynote address at SNUG'14 in Santa Clara in 5 weeks.
On the people side of the Tempus vs. PrimeTime war, I've heard reports
that CDNS bigwig Anirudh Devgan managed to talk Kam Kittrell into
jumping ship away from Synopsys and to join Cadence.
  
Prior to the 2011 SNPS-LAVA acquisition, Kam was GM of Magma's Digital
Implentation BU. As a 12 year LAVA veteran, Kittrell was responsible
for BlastFusion, Talus, and Tekton. With so many ex-Magma employees
popping up at CDNS, more and more of today's SNPS vs. CDNS tool wars
are really just proxy versions of yesterday's SNPS vs. LAVA wars.
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- HUH?: the bloggers that Sidense quietly pays to blog about Sidense are
rehashing that the Kilopass vs. Sidense patent lawsuit was dismissed.
But this was resolved 10 months ago??? Why does Xerxes Wania, the CEO
of Sidense, want his paid bloggers to rehash this news now? To gloat?
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- Got no news on Synopsys vs. Atoptech lawsuit. SNPS still hates ATOP.
ATOP still hates SNPS. Both sides' lawyers love the billable hours.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- FUN QUOTE
"Did you see this? Dean Drako was written up in Forbes!"
- Anon source on Dean Drako of IC Manage
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- Congrats go to Apache/Ansys R&D guys who created PathFinder Dynamic,
their electrostatic discharge tool that models human body sparks
zapping chips. It won a DesignCon DesignVision award this year.
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- Congrats also to the upcoming DATE'14 conference -- Europe's version
of DAC -- got 1,090 paper submissions; an all-time high and only 300
are selected. The other cool thing is that since DATE'14 is being
held in Dresden, Germany (i.e. in Northern Europe instead of vacation
-centric Southern Europe) attendance should be up this year!
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- I got an untested new source who claims that Silvaco Ivan Pesic's
extended family, his widow, his son, his daughter & son-in-law, plus
the grandkids are all attending the Winter Olympics in Russia.
  
So if you're watching curling in Sochi and you happen to catch a
glimpse of a young "Ivan" in the audience, it's Ivan's son! :)
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- FUN QUOTE
"This affair was moronic from the start. It serves
Tom Beckley right that he got his @$$ handed back
to him on a platter."
"We can't get sued? Thank God. This was a stupid
case to begin with."
- Users on CDNS vs. BDA lawsuit in ESNUG 535 #9.
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- Remember the big 50th EDAC Reunion Party that Kathryn Kranen held last
October where all those EDA bigwigs like: Aart de Geus, Joe Costello,
Wally Rhines, Rajeev Madhavan, Jim Hogan, Roy Jewell, Simon Segars,
Raul Camposano, John Sanguinetti and Ravi Subramanian turned out?
Here's a secret link to the party pics! Shhhhh! Don't tell anyone!
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And again, feel free to comment/correct/scold/question anything you see here
by just emailing me directly. And, yes, you'll be ANONYMOUS!
- John Cooley
DeepChip.com Holliston, MA
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