( ESNUG 538 Item 8 ) -------------------------------------------- [04/04/14]
Subject: Brett lectures on "Cooley facts" vs. real facts on Forte/CDNS
> Multiple spies tell me Forte sold to Cadence for $10 to $12 M -- and one
> lone spy claims it went for $20 million. Either way, if any of these
> spies are right, it's bad news because it means Forte went to CDNS for
> around 0.6X to 1.3X of its $15.5 M annual revenue -- that is, it was
> at a "fire sale" price.
>
> - from http://www.deepchip.com/items/0537-03.html
From: [ Brett Cline of Cadence ]
Hi, John,
I read through your recent CDNS-aquires-Forte article and I hardly know
where to start. So many errors and so little time. So, I figured I'd walk
your DeepChip readers through a short list of "Cooley facts" (not to be
confused with real facts) to set the record straight.
- "Cooley fact": Cadence purchased Forte.
本物 / Hon-mono / True. I figured I'd give you this one since a
press release went out last month, you clearly managed to read
the headline, and got this part right.
- "Cooley fact": Brett joined Cadence.
本物 / Hon-mono / True. Actually so did Sean Dart, Mark Marshall,
Mike Meredith and the majority of the staff. While I've been
visible in DeepChip over the years, it's really the work of our
engineers, FAEs, sales, marketing that you should recognize.
- "Cooley fact": Cadence just bought a duplicate tool.
偽物 / Nise-mono / False. C-to-Silcon and Cynthesizer are both
SystemC-to-RTL synthesis tools - that's the headline at a
high-level. For years we've known that Forte and Cadence were
on similar paths in regards to a high-level synthesis and TLM
methodology vision. That's why there's a tremendous fit.
Another aspect you barely mentioned is all the IP that Forte
brought to Cadence. Our CynWare IP is synthesizable SystemC
that implements functions like line buffers, circular buffers,
point-to-point interfaces, other streaming interfaces, FIFOs,
and memory models - many of which also can have clock domain
crossing hardware logic. These are all available in TLM and
in pin-cycle accurate form for mixed speeds and accuracies.
Our CellMath IP is integer and floating point IP in either
SystemC or RTL. Our floating point IP is known for its great
QoR with functions like adders, multipliers, dividers, square
root, dot-product, reciprocal (rcp), reciprocal square root
(rsq), combined rcp/rsq and more. There are even highly
customized multifunction blocks such as rcp/rsq/log2/exp2 and
a full floating point unit that adds sin/cos/sqrt to that.
There are IEEE and non-IEEE versions of these and many have
varying precisions and architectures for different performance
vs. area tradeoffs. If you are doing a design in floating
point, this is the stuff to have.
- "Cooley fact": Cadence paid fire-sale prices for Forte.
偽物 / Nise-mono / False. The only thing on fire here is your
pants. While I'm guessing we didn't make a dent in the Cadence
coffers, your assertion simply isn't true. I can't give you the
full deals given that I now have a few new "legal guardians",
but I can say that this deal is good for the investors, the
employees, Cadence, and our mutual customers. (Even if I could
provide numbers we all know that your math skills are somewhat
"lacking" so it wouldn't matter anyway.) Dig away, but there's
no story here.
- "Cooley fact": Brett speaks fluent Japanese.
偽物 / Nise-mono / False. I have been known to embarrass myself
attempting to sputter out a few poorly formed Japanese sentences
but, in reality, I hardly know any Japanese. I can ask where
the bathroom is and I'm able to order ビール / Bīru / Beer (but
only up to 5 -- after that I have to resort to hand signals).
I've been to Japan with Forte about 45 times over the years.
Our Forte KK team started in 2004 and has been a driving force
for the adoption of SystemC synthesis. When combined with
Cadence's HLS team in Japan, our customers will be able to tap
into even more talented engineers -- who can even order, in
fluent Japanese, top quality sushi to go with the beer!
So, John, I hope this clears it up for your readers. Maybe now you'll stop
giving Gary Smith grief about the HLS market. This added CDNS investment
in HLS proves Gary's points and will further accelerate HLS growth beyond
the early adopters. I just spent a two weeks in Asia and customers I spoke
with are loving it. Which reminds me:
だから、どのように再びそのSystemCの賭けはどうでしょうか？
Or are you chicken, John? (Sorry for my poor Japanese!)
- Brett Cline
Cadence Design Systems Boston, MA
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