Here's an interview I recently did with Ken McElvain on his transition from
HP lacky to Mentor R&D guy to Synplicity founder.

                http://www.deepchip.com/demos/ken.fhtml

Along the way we discuss his being an Air Force brat, his father, HP, IBM,
Silicon Compilers, Autologics & Autologics II, leaving Mentor, starting
Synplicity, Xilinx troubles, free vs. buy, Quicklogic, Altera, the Internet
bubble, Synopsys, IPOing, his wife, CEO Gary, LSI Logic, Structured ASICs,
and his FPGA physical synthesis.  Enjoy!  - John

P.S. Oh, yea, plus his new unannounced "Total Recall" product.