( SNUG 99 Item 40 ) ----------------------------------------------- [3/31/99]
IF YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM, BUY THEM: To understand the static timing analysis
market that PrimeTime lives in, just look at these Dataquest numbers:
Revenue ($M) Growth Market Share
1995 1996 1997 (%) (%)
-------------------- ------ ------------
Synopsys - 0.3 9.8 28.7 49.4
ViewLogic 5.0 7.3 - -
Cadence 2.3 5.0 6.4 29.1 32.4
Chronology 0.0 1.8 2.0 11.1 10.1
Mentor Graphics 1.0 0.4 0.1 -72.1 0.5
Other Companies 1.0 1.0 1.5 52.1 7.5
All Companies 9.3 15.7 19.8 25.8 100.0
(And these are just the 1997 numbers; it's rumored that the unreleased
1998 numbers give Synopsys a 55 to 65 percent market share!) With a
clever one-two punch, Synopsys grabbed the lion's share of this market by
developing PrimeTime plus buying the MOTIVE market share when it aquired
ViewLogic. The foundries are also backing PrimeTime with 6 of them (IBM,
LSI, TI, NEC, Fujitsu, Toshiba, and Samsung) publically accepting design
timing sign-off with PrimeTime. (Do a web search and you'll see them.
What's odd is that I couldn't find *any* foundries accepting Cadence Pearl
static timing sign-off. What's up with that?) The fact that there were
136 users at the SNUG'99 PrimeTime tutorial (with 8 of them standees)
plus the fact that PrimeTime comes up regularly in ESNUG discussions
confirms that there's quite a bit of customer interest in this tool.
"There's a general dissatisfaction with static timing analysis tools.
Users complain about the lack of asynch support. Pearl is getting
better reviews than PrimeTime but Cadence doesn't seem to be pushing
it, since Kuhoo [the Pearl mktng mgr] went on maternity leave.
There's a lot of interest, especially from the Nokias and Erickssons,
in the new Mentor offering (called Velocity SST, weird name) because
it can handle non-synchronous designs."
- Analyst Gary Smith of Dataquest
"Overall, I'm fairly happy with PrimeTime. Tcl isn't my favorite
language, and PrimeTime does fatal occasionally, but it is much better
than DesignTime. Also, I've been impressed with the hotline team's
knowledge and responsiveness. Whoever is running the PrimeTime show
over at Synopsys seems to really care about getting it right."
- Paul Zimmer of Cerent in ESNUG 315
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