( ESNUG 423 Item 11 ) ------------------------------------------- [02/26/04]
Subject: Questions Primarily for Wally
For Wally Rhines of Mentor: What initiatives are being taken by MNTR to
integrate their Calibre product line with SNPS tools, given the fact that
SNPS is touting a open MW for sometime now? Are there specific roadmaps in
place? Are high level discussions happening or is this too far fetched given
that Calibre competes with Hercules (a SNPS product?)
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For Mentor: The only strong tool you have today is Calibre family and the
DFT environment. Are you serious about being a player IC Design tools?
What are you doing to beat CADENCE Virtuoso environment and the latest
Synopsys COSMOS development? What are the new features and tools that
IC Station is working on?
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For Mentor - When are we getting differential pair Signal Integrity?
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I would be interested in knowing what their strategies are in the area of
multi-domain microsystem design composed of electrical, mechanical, optical
and biological components in terms of design capture, modeling, simulation
and system level optimization. Do they have any products within the
next 2-3 years?
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Wally - SNPS is making a push into IP like you thought would be important a
few years back. What value do you think customers get by buying IP
from EDA vendors?
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1) Mentor Graphics seem content to be the Systems Integrator of the CAE
world. Find a tool you like and we'll integrate it and put a wrapper
around it. Is this their business model or are they relegated to this
role since they do not possess best in class tools?
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Also I would ask Wally R. how come his Modelsim simulator continues to
be number 3 behind VCS and NCSim. Its pretty and all, but why not play
against the big muscles like VCS and NCSim. How can he afford to
basically live off of the sale pitch that "its cheap."
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How about this for Mentor:
Isn't this company worth more dead than alive? Eg. Wouldn't this company be
worth far more to shareholders if it split into two pieces, and merged it's
DRC piece with a hot-layout product like Magma? Wouldn't two focused
companies be worth far more to shareholders (and to customers)?
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1) Wally - Nassda announced on Feb 17 that HSIM would be integrating with
ADVance MS. What happened to the Mach TA simulator from Mentor? Doesn't Mach
TA directly compete with HSIM?
2) Wally - Do you expect more layoffs at Mentor in 2004 like the one in
December 2003?
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Here is the question I would ask of Mentor Graphics:
It appears that your future strategy with BoardStation/BoardStation RE
is to eliminate 3rd party interfaces such as the Cadence Spectra router.
Why do you see this as an advantage for Mentor? Is this a basic change
in Mentor's open system to a closed system? Has Mentor seen what has
happened to almost all EDA vendors that have done this in the past?
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6) Mentor
How well did the Precision Synthesis go? What are you doing in terms of
the IC Design Engineering flow? Will the extent of support that you
provide for FPGA be equated to ASIC's in the years to come?
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Now, this would be my questions to Wally:
What is your real plan concerning Open Access? Will OA be fully supported
by Mentor? I am sure, that openess against other tools / flows is an
advantage of any commercial flow in long term. So for any EDA vendor
protectionism makes sense only in short term. Openness is a successful
long term strategy. I guess Cadence understood this (see OA). Does Mentor
understand this also?
Mentor announced an OA interface capability for IC-Station for end of 2004.
Will this be all? Or will Mentor go further and integrate the OA data base
(memory sharing a.s.o.)
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