( DAC 99 Item 39 ) ----------------------------------------------- [6/25/99]

 THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES?  For this DAC Trip Report, I had 77 engineers
 respond.  And, as a rough cut on how engineers comparitively saw all these
 new physical tools, I did a quick keyword count.

            Magma 'Blast Fusion'                 103
            Avant! Jupiter                        48
            Cadence Ambit PKS/Envisia             26
            Monterey Dolphin                      22
            Synopsys 'Chip Architect'              9
            Tera Systems TeraForm                  5
            Sapphire FormIT/NoiseIT/PowerIT        3
            Silicon Perspective 'First Encounter'  3
            Aristo 'IC Wizard'                     2

 Mentally checking the data, it made sense.  The between-synth-and-P&R
 tools like TeraForm, Sapphire, Encounter, and IC Wizard weren't big news
 items compared to the Magma/Monterey/Avant! stories.  What surprised me
 was that so few engineers made reference to Chip Architect from Synopsys.
 Roughly a 10X difference between it and Magma.

 When I mentioned this to the Synopsys top brass, they said lots of users
 saw the Chip Architect demo at DAC and loved it.  To take a fair approach
 to this, I told them to send me the names, e-mail addresses, and phone
 numbers of the users who saw the demo at DAC and I'd survey them about
 Magma/Jupiter/Ambit/Monterey/Chip Architect.  Their first reply was that
 they couldn't "violate the privacy of their customers by giving out their
 names."  Later, I was told that they had contracted an outside consultant
 to survey the users and "two people surveying at the same time can mess
 things up.  We'll share the survey results with you, though."  Whatever.

 So, from the outside looking in, while it appears that Magma made the
 biggest customer impression at DAC -- it also appears they may be grabbing
 defeat from the jaws of victory because the industry gossip is that
 Magma's VP of Worldwide Sales, Kevin Lynch (confirmed), Magma's VP of
 North American Sales, Bruce Costello (confirmed), and three of their R&D
 staff (rumored) have all quit.  Other bad news for Magma is that Atiq
 Raza, the Prez of AMD, has resigned from AMD.  Raza is on the Magma board
 and drove the AMD/Magma relationship.  No Raza may mean no Magma at AMD.

    "All glory is fleeting."

         - Roman proverb


    "Why did the "no iterations" company, Magma, give away boomerangs?
     If you're using a boomerang properly, you'll be doing lots of
     iterations.  Confusing message there."

         - Lee Bradshaw of Alantro