DAC was when I first heard about the new Cadence Precision Router (CPR) tool.

It was the week after DAC when Mike Santarini broke the story that CPR was
actually 1/2 developed at IBM.  I laughed when I read the news.  I even
enjoyed writing a fun, mocking Wiretap about how I had "got played, too" by
Mike Fister's slick corporate PR team.

This was just one of those quirky Cadence stories until now, 6 weeks later
on Friday, two Cadence and one IBM executive reported in EE Times that quote
"most of the contributions to the router were made by the Cadence team."

The problem with relying solely on Cadence and IBM executives for the whole
CPR story is that it's like relying on FEMA executives as your only source
of info about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina.

Which brings me to my weird little debt of honor.

Executives, by their very nature, are politicians.  Whether they be from
Cadence or IBM or FEMA or Synopsys or Microsoft or HP or PBS, executives
know their primary job is to present the company marketing image in the
best possible light.  At any time executives can be telling the truth, or
a selective version of the truth, or a mix of truth and image, or their
interpretations of the truth, or sometimes (albeit rarely) outright lies.
It also means that executives will often omit or "forget to mention" key
parts of a story until you discover them on your own.  In addition, it
means executives will sometimes use carefully worded everyday language in
some artifically precise manner to give you a false impression that backs
their company's marketing message.  Yes, it's all blatent misdirection,
but it's not done maliciously.  Ask any politician (and if they're being
momentarily completely honest) they'll tell you that having to do "spin"
is just part of the job.  It's how PR and Marketing works.

For example, to increase the Cadence stock price, Mike Fister is trying to
convince Wall Street that his R&D people can create blockbuster EDA tools
on their own.  (There's not a lot of margin in paying top dollar for an EDA
start-up and then reselling it in the Cadence channel -- especially when
you factor in the integration R&D costs.)  That's why there was no press
release nor mention from a Cadence executive when they acquired Praesagus;
it goes against their Our-R&D-Can-Make-It-From-Scratch image that Fister
is hyping to Wall Street.  It was only Mike Santarini's snooping around
which broke the Praesagus story.  The Cadence execs, as good politicians,
weren't going to say squat.  Even if it was the truth, it would be career
suicide to say anything that publically countered Fister's policy.

Which brings me to my problem.  Now that there's such a big stink about
how Cadence CPR was actually developed, I have to dig deep into it.  I see
one of three outcomes here:

   1.) I find out IBM really did develope CPR and that the Catena "R&D"
       team is yet another group of overhyped Cadence integration hacks.
       No biggie.  Means I catch the Cadence and IBM executives lying to
       make CDNS stock look good (i.e. they were doing their jobs.)  Yawn.

   2.) I find out that the IBM guys wrote half the source code and the
       Cadence Catena guys wrote the other half of the source code on
       CPR.  This means Cadence Corporate Marketing was trying to claim
       100% credit for something Cadence R&D did 50% of the work on.  It
       also means Santarini was right, and I was right mocking CDNS.

   3.) I find out that the Cadence Catena guys wrote the source code
       while the IBM guys tested it -- in the classic customer-beta-test
       model we all know.  If this is the case, from one engineer to
       another, I'd personally owe the Cadence Catena guys a big public
       apology as a matter of honor for dissing their honest work.

To find out the truth here, I have to bypass the executives who want me to
get only the Cadence Corporate Marketing "approved" version of the "truth".
So in that pursuit, I'd like to ask that if you're one of the hands-on
people at Cadence or IBM who worked on CPR, please contact me.  (If you're
worried about Big Brother tracking you, feel free to call me from your
private cell phone or email me from your home email account.)  If you're an
ex-employee who knows any of the names of the actual people in Catena or at
IBM who worked on CPR, please contact me.  If you're in an EDA start-up or
if you're someone who sometimes spies on Cadence because they're a rival
and you happen to know the real story about how CPR was developed, please
contact me.  If you're a VC or a Wall Street groupie who tracks the EDA
industry and you know the truth behind CPR, please contact me.  Even if
your neighbor's cousin (twice removed) aunt's hairdresser knows the truth
about CPR, please contact me.

My goal is to not publish anyone's names; not the names of the Catena guys,
nor the IBM guys, nor of any of the people who contact me on this request.
It's to find out exactly who wrote what percentage of the actual source code
on the Cadence Precision Router project.

It's all about whether or not I owe a public debt of honor to the engineers
on Cadence Catena team.  I'll let you know in my next Wiretap.