( 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