( SNUG 07 Item 4 ) ----------------------------------------------- [03/25/08]
Subject: Synopsys Central R&D Support
NOT HAPPY CAMPERS -- God help you if you're facing a tech problem that your
local AE can't solve, because you have only a 20% chance of getting "great"
R&D help on it!
"Most of the time when you call the Synopsys hotline, do you feel
that you get access to (choose one) knowlegable experts, or people
with average skills, or the truly inept?"
2005 - knowlegable experts: ############ 24%
average skills: ########################## 54%
the truly inept: ########## 21%
"How do you feel about the Synopsys "Central" Support (where
your problem moves beyond your local AE)? In your opinion is
it (choose one) -- great, so-so, or lame?"
2007 - great: ########## 20%
so-so: ######################## 48%
lame: ################ 32%
This year I added a new question to compare the R&D support between vendors:
"How does Synopsys Central Support rate to Cadence/Mentor/Magma's
Central support? (choose one) -- better, equal, worst?"
2007 - better: ########## 19%
equal: ########################### 54%
lame: ############## 27%
The sad thing from these stats is that crappy central support is seen as an
EDA industry norm!
P.S. Some of the customer "best" and "worst" stories are a hoot to read!
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Support is generally good
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
so-so. Worse than Mentor.
Best story: Was being bitten by a QoR bug in DC last year, it got fixed
pretty quickly.
Worst story: Suggested some improvements to Raphael NXT, they were promptly
ignored. And now we're planning to move away from NXT.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We seem to get R&D support fairly quickly and it is usually pretty good.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Really good most of the time. Clear English is my only gripe with any
of these. Don't get me wrong, I like foreigners, but when it comes to
solving a technical problem I must have clarity of communication. Email
is often better.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Lame. 'hot-potato' approach, only keen to throw the problem back to you.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
so-so. They handle bug reports fine, and get me a workaround when
available. However, when something needs to be fixed in a future
version, I feel like the issue falls into a black hole.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Overall, I rate this flow so-so. Here's why:
The people in the Central Support staff are great. My problem with
Central Support is they always require a test case, and the fix that
comes out of their process is in a forthcoming release. That doesn't
help resolve my problem now. So I usually have to come up with a
workaround myself to keep my present work on its completion target.
They're way better than Cadence, don't know about the other two. Boy,
that's sad when a so-so experience beats out the competition by a wide
margin, huh?
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Lame. Best story involves getting an engineering patch release cut to
solve a core dump. Worst story involves exchanging emails every
24 hours, requiring 7 business days to get to a workaround.
Magma has much better response time.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
so-so.
Mentor's central support was the best.
Cadence is horrible
Synopsys at least tries to solve your problem.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Great so far, gotten good response for the problems we've had.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
so-so. Best - generally very knowledgable, Worst - never read or don't
understand communication to the support center. Communication is
difficult. I have to wonder if there is a language barrier issue!
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Decent, not great. Central seems to have better research after the issue
moves past initial dweeb response stage. Local people just follow along.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Lame - AE is bad enough. Compared to others, Worse. Magma/Cadence
central support better (they make R&D available easier)
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Great. Most problems related to DesignWare are handled quickly
since some of the R&D is in USA.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Synopsys central support (through the online method) is lame (very lame).
I tried it once and ended up working around the problem on my own.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I feel that Mentor support in general is the best. But I haven't
worked with Mentor in a long time. I use Cadence LEC and the support
is great. But I have to say I hate every ones "support@mycompany.com"
support.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Great! My best story is that they got back to me within hours and
resolved my concern in less than a day. My worst story is that I still
have three enhancement STARs open dating back to 2003 from issues the
support team couldn't resolve. Does anyone ever look at these?
Cadence's techs are just as responsive, but I find the Synopsys
support process overall to be more organized and efficient.
- Tom Mannos of Sandia National Laboratories
Mixed, but usually good. I've had some bogus answers, but usually the
handoffs and technical people I deal with are quite good.
Better than Cadence.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
My problem "was resolved and closed" in India. Granted the solution
was elegant, but resolved a completely different problem.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Hotline support: pretty bad
A very bad thing to mention is the hotline support that is normally
coming from India. Either you know a local AE you can put on Cc (and
who just needs to get a service-request number) or you are just
wasting your time.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Not had any dealings with them for four years now. Don't miss them
either.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Dont deal with them direct, but DC long in the tooth.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Last question I had got sent to India. Not sure where "central" support
is located, but the support in this case was lame. I don't share the
American fear of "off-shoring" - I just think the AE in this case was
lame (not literally :-).
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
great
Feature requests should be taken more seriously, especially for VCS.
Better than Mentor. Don't know the others.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Black hole were all questions disappear, never to be seen again...
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
My BEST and WORST story using Synopsys Assertion IP on AMBA transactions.
In one particular case, the AMBA spec beeing somewhat vague, I ranked
the error-message as erroneous. I had mails back and forth during 2
weeks, and kept saying it was wrong, while the Support guy in India said
it was right. Finally, after talking with Norwegian collegues, I had to
admit *I was wrong* ... These AIPs are easy to use, but so verbose that
it's a nightmare to prune the messages.
- Jerome Poidevin of Atmel
So-so, long delays for real solutions contrary to any pre-sales promise.
But problem does eventually get solved. Workaround is usually found
quickly. But workarounds take time, cost repeatibility, etc.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Pretty lame. Have some language difficulties understanding them some
times. Mentor's central support is by far, the best for DFT.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Their support is pretty good, not great but better that 'so-so'.
- John Stiles of Silicon Logic Engineering
Once I had to teach an AE how to run the tool because he is not familiar
with it. Many times AEs tried to close the case (after filing STAR) even
where there is no workaround (customer still stuck with the problem) and
no definite solution date (when and what release has the fix).
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Personally, I've found Synopsys local support to be the best of the 3.
As far as central, it is a tie between Synopsys and Mentor.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Let's just say I'd much rather work through the AE.
Equally bad experiences with Cadence & Synopsys.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
So-so. Better than Cadence, worse than Magma.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Little experience with them, but it seems that too much information is
needed to diagnose a problem.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
So-so. I asked them to make a change - they told me to prove it. We
ended up publishing a paper to make the point.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Lame. DC is crashing on our design for the past 3 months and all work
arounds/revisions are fragile. They run with the present setup and
crash if something small changes in the flow. Amongst all the fixes
that Synopsys has done, never once have they pointed that we are doing
something wrong in our flow.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Most of the time Synopsys Central Support is good. I had one case where
the tech did not understand Formality well enough to even give me proper
information to start figuring out the problem. This was a tech in
India. When I complained to my local AE manager, I was told Formality
cases were not supposed to be routed to India, they were supposed to
remain in the US.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Reasonable compared with others. I once had a DFT expert from Georgia
(at least the accent sounded so) and she was a treat to talk to. Solved
the problem, too.
Cadence support blows. In the past few years it is getting worse (or
I'm getting older). They always refer me to a manual when I specifically
tell them I'm emailing because I'm working with something that is not
behaving like the manual/docs. Lazy and 0 debug.
In reality neither are stunning when thinking of the cost of the tools
(and maintenance). IF I had to chose, I at least in the past had more
issues resolved with Synopsys than Cadence. If I can't get an AE,
(from either syn or cdn) I never expect my problem to be solved.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
So-so. They at least response quickly. Knowledge is not so great and
they are not very proactive, either.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
North American central support is good. Off-shore support is lame. Very
lame. Unless it is a showstopper issue, the time to pack up the testcase
is time wasted. Are off-shore support AE compensated based on number of
cases they close or by the number of customers that are satisfied with
the response? The best support I have had is always with the local AE who
respond with pertinent information in the same time zone.
- Jonathan Bahl of COT Consulting, Inc.
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