( DAC 00 Item 32 ) --------------------------------------------- [ 7/13/00 ]
Subject: Magma 'BlastChip' and 'BlastFusion'
MUCH SMOKE, BUT NO LAVA: Like last year, Magma made a big splash on the DAC
floor this year. I got a lot of responses on Magma. It appears everyone
had something to say about them. Seems like one minor running theme this
year is users wanting less hype and more actual results. At this year's
DAC, Magma still didn't have a credible customer tape-out. The story I got
from their CEO, Rajiv, was that Magma did have three tape-outs but he just
couldn't get any of his customers to talk. (I told Rajiv: "Yea, and I'm
the World's Greatest Lover, too. Just don't ask for me the names of any
of my ex-girlfriends, OK? Call me when you get something real.")
I've gotta give Rajiv some credit, though. Three weeks after our DAC
conversation he managed to get a so-so Magma customer story up on the new
http://www.EEDesign.com website. Rajiv had carted out some CEO/Founder/
VP-of-Engineering (all one guy) from a very small start-up who was doing a
chip using the standard Synopsys DC & Cadence SE design flow and was going
on record saying he was experimenting with Magma on the side. It's not a
tape-out. It wasn't a we-used-purely-Magma-and-it-was-great story. And
the guy even at the end of the interview said "When it [Magma] gets more
stable and mature, we will probably start eliminating other tools, but I
don't see that happening right now" -- but at least Rajiv tried and luckily
Goering was at EEDesign.com to keep the interview honest. (In contrast, two
months ago Cadence did a similar "small, unknown company" tape-out story
with PKS and EmpowerTEL. They used one of their infamous Cadence press
releases. What a joke. After I did some snooping, it turned out that PKS
was used only on a 50 Kgate MIPS core inside a 2.5 million gate design. It
was like PKS putting a shiney new door knob on the front door of a newly
built house and then claiming to be the Master Carpenter who built the
palace! Talk about cooking up some world class FUD!)
"Number one, the tool has to be more stable. It shouldn't core dump.
It's just a process of getting the last couple of bugs out of the way.
Number two, they need to put in some hooks for power. They also need to
do a little more sophisticated analysis for crosstalk and noise. Right
now it's very conservative, which is okay. Then they need some hooks
for synthesis, some of the DesignWare-like components, ECO support, a
better timing reporting mechanism.
I would like to see run times improve. In a [million gate] block like
ours, it's a little over a day. I'd like to get to less than a day."
- Govind Kizhepat, founder, chairman, and vice-president of
engineering of video chipmaker iCompression talking about
Magma on http://www.EEDesign.com
"Magma 2 stars (out of 3 possible)
BlastChip and BlastFusion
Magma is a fairly new company provided physical design tools for layout
and timing closure. Unlike Synopsys which is leveraging previous tools,
Magma has built their suite of tools from the ground up. Their main
claim is that zero iterations are required to close timing during
layout. Unlike Physical Compiler which merges synthesis into the flow
but leaves backend routing to other tools, Magma takes the output of the
synthesis tool and runs completely through to a complete layout. I'm no
expert in this area, but Magma is getting a lot of hype (and venture
capital) and seems to be giving Synopsys a run for this market. Keep an
eye on these guys as some tapeouts with their tools become publicly
known. I have no idea yet on how scan insertion and CTS impact the use
of this tool for placement and layout.
BlastFusion uses what is called a FixedTiming methodology which
generates a timing sign-of number which is "guaranteed" through
post-layout. The timing is held fixed throughout the physical design
process. Magma takes a standard synthesized netlist (from Synopsys or
other tool), library data, and user-specified constraints and performs
a series of optimizations to determine the best possible timing. Timing
is maintained throughout the physical design flow through a series of
physical optimizations such as dynamic cell sizing and load adjustment.
The Magma toolset contains optimization, placement, and routing engines
which all operate off of a unified data model."
- an anon engineer
"Magma gave a great presentation this year like they did in New Orleans.
They really can talk the talk. With no track record it's hard to
determine if they can walk the walk though. Years of business with
Cadence taught me that EDA talk is cheap. Rajeev is ex-Cadence. He
knows the talk game well."
- an anon engineer
"The word on the street is that Magma's placer is currently superior to
both Cadence's and Avanti's. The router is supposedly about the same.
The local Avanti AE has admitted they are losing customers to Magma.
Magma's router is gridded but uses multiple grids per wire pitch (4?)
so that it can incrementally space wires to help with crosstalk.
The Magma router uses a 3D field solver to create a lookup table of
geometries, then uses this lookup table for extraction (similar to most
other extraction tools). They solve signal integrity problems by
inserting buffers and sizing drivers (like Cadence) but also by ground
shielding of clocks, varying spacing of signals, and reordering of
signals so that signals that change in the same time period aren't
next to each other."
- an anon engineer
"* Magma: Most capabilities looked more mature than last year. They now
claim to have a detailed router. They are working on a new placer
which they claim can handle much larger designs. They announced a
merger with Moscape on the first day. Including Moscape's 35 people,
they now have 175 people on board! They'd better start making serious
money soon!"
- an anon engineer
"The two most interesting new tools are those from Magma and Monterey.
Later this year we will try out the Magma tool. This is a very
interesting tool, since it is based on the theory of Logical Effort.
If the silicon vendors can produce libraries with cells that agree well
with Magma "super cells", then this tool can really be something. I
just love a promising challenger!"
- an anon engineer
"I'm very very convinced about the success of Magma. On the other hand
I think Monterey will lose. For the radical approaches Monterey starts
too 'late' in the design cycle (netlist level)."
- an anon engineer
"Magma gives fun parties. Haven't found the meat yet."
- an anon engineer
"Concerning the timing closure problem I believe that we really need new
approaches that try to combine synthesis with physical design. Synopsys
has the most experience and most power (in terms of capital, market
share and man-power) to do the job, but maybe some other companies that
are starting from scratch, like Magma, are on the right way."
- an anon engineer
"Why did Magma buy MosCape anyway? Is it:
a) Addition of library characterization software rounds out suite?
b) Hard-core HSPICE verification of xcap nicely complements xcap
avoidance in BlastFusion?
c) All the other CEO's have a little acquisition, and Rajeev didn't
want to be left out?"
- an anon engineer
"Best buzz: I overheard a couple of groups discussing Magma's Blast
Fusion product, so I went to the floor to see it. It looked
interesting, but I couldn't get any numbers to compare it with DC."
- an anon engineer
"Keep up the great work on the DAC trip report. By the way:
- Was the Costello/Rajeev debate a passing of the torch?
- How do I explain to my grandkids that I didn't jump into the .com
bandwagon and I didn't grab the toys.com domain name when I had
the chance?
- A 27 year old just bought that $1.2 milllion dollar, 2 bedroom
"fixer-upper" down the street.
- I hope Magma does well. I hate to imagine what type of doghouse the
EDA industry will be in if Magma doesn't get the ROI for the $57
million they have raised already. By the way, what type of EPS do
they need to make the ROI for the investors to be happy - and when?
Remember, this is the $3 billion EDA industry. We're in the same
boat as the smokestack industries. Earnings still rule.
Harvey said you need to cross that $40 million threshold to really be
happy. That's when you can get your own plane.
- an anon engineer at a non physical design EDA start-up
"While listening to a demo at the Ultima booth for Clockwise, the person
demonstrating was asked if they supported working with the Magma tools.
He responded that they would be glad to, if Magma could show them any
customers using the Magma tools. Magma couldn't."
- an anon engineer
"The question is:
Do you go with conventional tools (Cadence Ambit, Synopsys DC)?
Or do you jump on the new train (Monterey, Magma)?
Or a combination of both (Cadence PKS, Synopsys PhysOpt + Avanti)?
And here definitely Magma has the best single path technology - but it
is a small company and has still some bugs (we evaluated it - more area,
better timing, bugs) and Synopsys is a big company with lot's of
Marketing (and as soon as they are not dependent on Avanti anymore which
is their biggest hurdle) they might be the winning ones as they have
compatibility with old DC scripts, good support, etc."
- an anon engineer
"In the panel on "Emerging Companies," Thursday in the last slot, one of
the panel said something to this effect: "We should refer to these
companies' [Synopsys, Cadence, Avanti, Mentor] stocks collectively as
the SCAM index for the EDA industry." The problem is, I don't remember
exactly who said it. I think it was Rajeev Madhavan (Magma CEO). An
EE Times article said it was Joe Costello, but I'm positive it wasn't.
He referred to it and said he liked it, but he didn't coin it."
- an anon engineer
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