( ESNUG 351 Item 9 ) ---------------------------------------------- [5/4/00]
Subject: Censorship, InterHDL, Hitler, Stalin, God, LSI Logic, & Gerry Hsu
> Stalin ruled Russia with a cult of personality the same way Gerry rules
> Avanti. Stalin was extremely paranoid, but he was dealing with Hitler
> and very unforgiving Russian politics. Gerry's paranoid, but he's
> dealing with Cadence and a very unforgiving San Jose District Attorney's
> Office. Stalin killed millions of people in the Soviet Union, sort of
> like how Gerry burns through employees at Avanti.
>
> But Stalin took a backwards Russia and in 30 years made it a nuclear world
> Soviet super power that bested the German Wehrmacht along the way. Gerry
> took a nothing ArcSys and turned it into a 26 consecutive profitable
> quarters Avanti that still bests Cadence in most P&R benchmarks.
>
> - from (censored) "Thank God For Gerry Hsu"
From: Al Kozloski
John,
Can I infer from this that Cadence can be compared to Hitler and the German
Wehrmacht? ;)
- Al Kozloski
Axis Corp.
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From: [ Anon ]
John,
"Thank God for Gerry Hsu"??? Really? Gerry is a pariah whose company
is *allegedly* founded on stolen intellectual property. In my book,
dismemberment of both the company and the founder is warranted when the
charges are eventually proved. It does not matter that Gerry is not
the first nor the last crook in the world, but, it does matter that he
*allegedly* is a crook, and an unrepentant one at that. Until Gerry is
gone from Avanti and Cadence is properly restituted, I will not use *any*
Avanti tools. This is my personal decision and has nothing to do with
whether or not my company has the moral courage to do likewise. Anon,
please.
- [ Anon ]
P.S. This is easily your most pathetic, moronic column to date. That's
more likely why it was pulled from EE Times.
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From: Steve Waterbury
Gee, John, that Stalin was quite a guy!
Huh? I mean, politically incorrect is one thing ...
I dare you to do a column that idolizes Hitler next.
- Steve Waterbury
NASA
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From: Sanjay Lall
John,
Impressive Summation. However, what about all the other crap technology
that has been acquired by Avanti and barely made it out of it's shell
in the last 4 years? You forget the other acquisitions and their demise.
- Sanjay Lall
Silicon Software
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From: [ Anon Within Synopsys ]
John,
I gotta say, you glossed over one very big point. Gerry "brought competiton
to the backend P&R flow" through theft, plain and simple. That's not
something we should thank God for.
- [ Anon Within Synopsys ]
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From: "tfran"
John,
What piece of loco-dung did the Gadfly land on? Kudos for personalities
and products. The Internet maybe FREE but perhaps the Gadfly microphone
is NOT. "God and Gerry Hsu" in the same sentence -- and you're wondering
why EE Times balked. Duh!
Personalities/Religion aside, the only real news is Avanti has a thinning
lead in the P&R product race. Anything more, reads as paid for propaganda.
As an ex-Avanti with an inside view of the circle, any kudos for this man
are transient.
- "tfran"
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From: [ Anon Within Synopsys ]
John,
Keep me anon if you want to use these comments.
I'm sorry this was censored, but I beg to disagree with your thesis.
Avanti is a great EDA technology company and has developed great products,
but Gerry's and the companies behaviors are bad for EDA and bad for the EDA
consumer.
The main issue is that the ongoing legal wrangling casts a dark cloud over
the entire EDA market and shows the companies executives as more interested
in infighting than in building new technology and value - not a good way to
build market cap. The low market cap is ultimately driving a flight of EDA
talent into dot com.
Gerry is doing his best to promote a closed proprietary EDA system which
does not provide for interoperability with other tools. Avanti has taken
great advantage of the other EDA company standards (LEF/DEF, LIB, PDEF,
SDC), yet has not provided any access to their Milkyway Apollo system. In
fact, Avanti has gone so far as to remove access to the XREF function to
disable the flow with Synopsys EPIC tools. Avanti has actively worked to
drop support of the SNPS-Avanti link-2-layout interface, and in 3 way
customer conference calls they have gone so far as to misrepresent facts to
their customers.
Case in point from the recent Mentor announcement:
Michael Jackson, head of West Coast R&D product management at Avanti, said
he had not heard that Mentor had attempted to contact his company about
interfacing Mentor's new placement technology to Avanti's Apollo P&R tool.
"I really don't see why we would engage in that type of an agreement
anyway," said Jackson. "It doesn't sound like Avanti's customers would
really benefit from it. Signal-integrity problems and timing closure
require a tight coupling between placement and routing. I don't see how
Mentor can believe they can integrate their placement product into our
Apollo product and do a better job of it than we can."
I would encourage you to ask the customer their opinion - I think you might
be surprised what you find. Yes best P&R tool - this does not indicate a
great company to do business with.
Gerry is akin to Bill Gates of EDA, Microsoft claims it has done great
things for the consumer and overall productivity. Yes great techology and
products, but in the end closed proprietary stance is bad for the long term
innovation.
- [ Anon Within Synopsys ]
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From: [ Anon ]
John,
I may be wrong, but I think the inner circle at Avanti is Taiwanese, not
Chinese. But I don't work at Hsu Inc, so what do I know? Anon!
- [ Anon ]
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> [ Editor's Note: I'm not going to try to explain the crazy politics
> that got this particular Industry Gadfly column yanked from EE Times.
> All I can say is: "Thank God For An Uncensored Internet". - John ]
From: Gale Morrison
Hi, John,
We'll publish it.
- Gale Morrison, Senior Editor
http://www.ElectronicNews.com
Electronic News NY, NY
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From: Keith Howick
John,
Thanks for the (Censored) Gadfly, you're at your best. I love nothing more
than being confused over whether or not I like Gerry Hsu! :-)
- Keith Howick
Silicon Metrics Corporation Austin, TX
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From: [ Anon ]
Nice post. Anonymously: A friend of mine close in the Avanti circle told
me that Gerry was hanging out in Taiwan during the investigation, mainly
because Taiwan didn't have extradition laws. Hearsay, but still true to
the spirit of Gerry.
- [ Anon ]
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From: Brien Anderson
Hi John,
Thank you very much for being uncensored.
- Brien Anderson
Acuson Corporation Mountain View, CA
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From: Mark Natale
So John, do you think Gerry is just kind of the "Tucker" of the EDA world?
You know, the guy who went against the Big Three auto makers right after
WW II?
- Mark Natale
ATI
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From: Bryan Lewis
Hi John,
Nice article. I am glad I got to read it and thanks for sending it my way.
- Bryan Lewis
DataQuest
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From: Scott Clapper
John,
I enjoyed your article on Avanti's Gerry Hsu; it was true and funny @ the
same time. I couldn't agree more, as a user of their software since the
ArcSys days and a Cadence user before that. Gerry did a great job of
integrating Cell3 and Cell Ensemble. However I believe there's a method
to his madness as he does treat AEs badly and R&D guys very well. (I heard
of large cash incentives.) If Avanti is hemorrhaging AE's, it's only good
for the company in that these AE's go out and get real jobs (with much
better pay) what software do you think they will bring in house? Also,
their tools are well integrated (what better way to sell more tools.)
Star-RCXT, for example, is far more accurate than anything else out there.
I don't know if I go as far as thanking GOD for Gerry Hsu, but I would say,
as a user, my life is easy with them, than without them.
- Scott Clapper
Chameleon Systems Sunnyvale, CA
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> Let me say that last thought another way. Since its start, LSI Logic has
> always been a "homebrew" P&R tools company (i.e. LSI PD and LSI CMDE.)
> Yet, recently LSI Logic fired their internal backend tool developers and
> standardized on Avanti's timing-driven P&R toolset. Why? Not because
> of Gerry's charming persona. Hardly. It was because Gerry's tools kicked
> butt in the benchmarks. (This is also why Intel was Avanti's biggest
> customer last year, followed by TI, Lucent, Philips, AMD, and Infineon.)
From: [ Anon Within Intel ]
John,
Pls keep me anon if you really want to post it.
1) I enjoy reading your mails and tahn you very much for the efforts.
2) Intel spend $ in mostly Avanti's ISS layout verification and minor
in RC and others. For P&R, Intel use Cadence most and some internal
development (which I think is not that good but has better GUI only).
There's some non-technical issue so that it's hard to bring their P&R here
even some engineers know/hear they are better. (big corp.)
Your above comment is a little bit misleading if you talks about P&R.
- [ Anon Within Intel ]
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From: Jerry Twomey
John,
Your LSI comments are very true, we spent several years inside LSI, and
their homebrew tools were a pain in the butt.
- Jerry Twomey
Fairchild Semiconductor San Diego, CA
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> On the dark side, customers are still furious about Gerry's $47K price on
> interHDL's VeriLint.
From: Mike Glenn
John,
Just to set the record straight, InterHDL had already raised the price
before we bought the company, and I have the InterHDL price list to
prove it. We have since lowered the price to $21K for the unlimited
use batch version.
- Mike Glenn
Avanti Fremont, CA
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