> Well, not two weeks after I wrote that piece, boom, Cadence comes out with
> a release touting it has internally developed a new full-custom router to
> replace the stalwart CCT router for advanced IC design.  At the time,
> Cadence said the new Cadence Precision Router (CPR) product was completely
> developed in house in the "Catena" build it in-house project.  The company
> stopped short of saying "nah, nah, nah -- we told you we can develop tools
> in-house, Santarini.'
>
> Fast forward to DAC: I'd just come out of one of the many great technical
> track sessions, when I bumped into some of my old friends from IBM's huge
> EDA research and development group. In the course of the conversation one
> of them said in passing something to the effect: "Yeah, we just finished
> developing that Precision router with Cadence." 
>
> "WHAT?," I said.  It turns out that IBM actually created a sizable chunk
> of the product, upwards of 50%.
>
> Check out the Cadence press release on Precision.  It does indeed have IBM
> quoted in two places but both quotes read like IBM is a beta customer
> partner (bug tester), not a co-developer of the tool.  Nowhere in the press
> release does Cadence fess up to the fact that the product was co-developed
> with IBM. ... Cadence may have even paid IBM for some of the technology;
> the IBM person was not at liberty to say.
>
>     - from http://www.edn.com/blog/1480000148/post/970004097.html


I have to say I howled with laughter when I read how Mike Santarini had found
out last week that the new "Cadence" Precision Router (CPR) was actually
developed at IBM.  My kudos goes out to both Mikes on this one.

The first Mike I must congratulate is Mike Fister for his excellently shifty
Cadence PR team who played me like a fiddle on this announcement.  While at
DAC, his people hooked me up with what was implied at the time were the CPR
developers -- one was even a Cadence Fellow who worked on IC Craftsman back
in the olde CCT days!  Talk about slick.  I even pulled Pallab Chatterjee,
the former head of the Magma Users Group, into this CPR demo.  We easily
spent over 90 minutes nitpicking over every little corner and feature of
this new replacement for Virtuoso.  In the meeting were the Cadence Fellow,
two CPR AE's, the CPR Marketing guy, and the Cadence Director of PR.  After
this extensive talk, Pallab and I added CPR to my Best of DAC 06 video list.

And in all that time, even after the video was later shot, not a single
Cadence person ever hinted at the fact that IBM half developed CPR!  Funny!
They seemed more concerned that I not talk about CPR as "CPR", but that I
instead use the term "Cadence Space-based Router".  (Apparently, what they
weren't telling me was that Fister didn't like the idea of IBM doing CPR
on Cadence or something.)  In retrospect, I guess it might have been a clue
that all the Cadence people in the room each had personal business cards on
them except for that one supposed "Cadence Fellow" -- but none of us caught
this clue at the time.  So my hat goes off to Fister's people for snookering
me along with the best of them.  Bravo!  We had no idea of what was really
going on.  My congrats on a job well done.

The second Mike I must congratulate, of course, is Mike Santarini for his
sniffing out the unofficial, unapproved IBM part of the CPR story.  And in
a backhanded way, Santarini also saw something that Pallab and I both saw:

  "I have to say that while I'm a bit miffed about Cadence's 'strategic
   omission' in the press release and what appears to be a complete lie
   during our interview/briefing on the new release, I have to say I'm
   somewhat relieved that IBM had a hand in the project; maybe Precision
   is the real deal and a viable replacement for IC Craftsman?"

That is, regardless of whether it was developed at Cadence or at IBM or by
Santa's Elves up at the North Pole, this CPR really is a "must see" tool
for any chip designer who's doing full custom routing.  It's interesting
stuff.  You should definitely check it out.

But just don't ask to talk to one of CPR's developers, though!  :)