Towards the end of last week some users emailed me that TransEDA had shut it
doors.  Also, if you go to the DAC web site, you'll see that TransEDA is not
showing at DAC this year.  As I had predicted in DVcon 04 #7 and DVcon 05 #9,
TransEDA was desperately fighting a losing battle against those "free" code
coverage functions which were already built into VCS/NC-Sim/Modelsim.

  "Always looking at ModelSim as possible replacement for TransEDA, but
   TransEDA keeps adding more functionality."

       - Greg Tumbush of Starkey Labs. (DVcon 05 #9)

  "We use TransEDA.  If the Cadence built-in coverage tool could achieve
   the same level as dedicated tool, we'd love to choose built-in."

       - Stone Shi of STmicroelectronics (DVcon 05 #9)

  "We used to use TransEDA for code coverage, but the built-in VCS
   coverage is faster and cheaper, so we use that now.  So far,
   the bugs encountered have not overcome the speed & price benefits."

       - Jonathan Craft of McData Corp. (DVcon 05 #9)

It was TransEDA's death warrant now that "free" has now finally caught up
to them.  "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?"

What troubles me about the death of TransEDA is that it's effectively also
the death of any more future development of code coverage.  That is, because
it was their reason for existance, TransEDA pushed code coverage tools to
become ever better.  But since I doubt that Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor ever saw
code coverage as a sales differentiator, now that the TransEDA pressure is
off, the Big 3 are going to put their simulator R&D energies elsewhere.  In
short, code coverage has become a "mature" been-there-done-that technology.

         ----    ----    ----    ----    ----    ----   ----

The next two companies now facing this ugly free-milk-and-a-cow problem in
the simulator universe are Atrenta and Novas.

Atrenta has its SpyGlass linter -- which competes directly with the "free"
built-in linters Leda/HAL/MTI in VCS/NC-Sim/Modelsim:

  "We have used Spyglass, but use Leda because of our integrated flow."

       - Dave Ferris of Tundra Semiconductor (DVcon 05 #8)

  "We use Atrenta Spyglass for linting.  Cadence's HAL is good for name
   convention checking, etc., but we don't use it.  Cadence's tool is
   simple with a command line interface and GUI.  Atrenta's seems to be
   better, but no command line interface.  Nice GUI."

       - [ An Anon Engineer ] (DVcon 05 #8)

Novas has its DeBussy waveform/debug environment -- which (again) competes
directly with the "free" built-in equivalents in VCS/NC-Sim/Modelsim:

  "Debussy & Verdi are great.  I've trial tested both, but I cannot (at
   two companies now) get the purchase price amortized across the time
   savings.  Too hard of a sell to management.  When the cost of
   debuggers approaches that of the simulators, management balks."

       - Jeff Koehler of Ammasso, Inc. (DVcon 05 #10)

  "We mainly use Debussy to look at gate level schematics and to look
   at connectivity in RTL, not so much for wave viewing/debugging.  For
   waves, we mostly use Synopsys Virsim because it integrates well with
   the rest of our Synopsys tools."

       - K.C. Buckenmaier of Hifn, Inc. (DVcon 05 #10)

  "We have a small number of Debussy users who swear by it, and having
   used it myself, I'll admit that it can be useful for tracing signals
   through RTL, but most of the features I'd use are now in NC-Sim, so
   I don't bother spending the time to build the RTL into a Debussy
   database anymore.  I guess the writing's probably on the wall for
   our Debussy license."

       - [ An Anon Engineer ] (DVcon 05 #10)

It's only a matter of time before the R&D guys at Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor
catch up with Atrenta SpyGlass and Novas DeBussy R&D guys -- and then I'll
be writing a mournful column about how linter & waveform/debug environment
technologies have effectively frozen in development.  Damn cows.  :(

         ----    ----    ----    ----    ----    ----   ----

P.S. [ this part was written a day later ] -- Peter Clarke of EE Times
     just today confirmed that TransEDA has closed its doors and "has
     been talking to interested third parties" about selling its assets.