( ESNUG 452 Item 3 ) --------------------------------------------- [02/17/06]
Subject: Questions for Joe Sawicki, GM of Design-to-Silicon, Mentor
Question to Joe Sawicki - GM of Design-to-Silicon, Mentor Graphics:
2004 (Before 0-in aquired)
0-In: ################################################ 47%
2005 (After 0-in acquired)
0-In: ########################## 26%
Is that drop in share because of competitive pressure from other good
tool like Synopsys's Magellan and Cadence's IFV -- or because of bad
0-In support from Mentor ??
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Mentor bought 0-In for $50 million. Is Mentor where tools go to die?
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Mentor claims that their 0-in verification methodology is perfect, "as long
as it is used correctly". Well, either their 0-in training materials are
inadequate, or 0-in is not as good as they claim. The number of designs
that need to be respun for FUNCTIONAL errors is large and increasing - maybe
just under a half (that we know about!).
Isn't it time for *all* vendors to fess up, admit that their flows are
simply not capable of catching the deep-state and really nasty bugs, and
start thinking carefully about a much more effective POST-silicon
validation methodology?
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Joe Sawicki - GM of Design-to-Silicon, Mentor Graphics
1) A recent Deepchip survey showed you had 79% market share but that 76%
of the market plans to switch to Mojave in the future. Given the Magma
is not aggressively marketting this product to customers yet, are these
numbers more an expression of dissatisfaction with Calibre (pricing,
support, roadmap) as it is a broad based acceptance of Mojave's
technology? How do you plan to address this?
2) Even if you retain your customers in physical verification, it seems
like between Cadence, Synopsys and Magma you will have at minimum one
competitor and maybe 2-3 more... where do you see future revenue growth
for your company, as one could assume your prices on Calibre will have
to drop. How will you survive a Calibre price war?
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1) Sawicki:
I remember being shown a presentation that said the development of Calibre
started around 1992/3. There is no doubt it was revolutionary, but suffered
major internal resistance for a good few years, according to an article by
Greg Hinkley.
That is 14 years ago, and Calibre has merely 'evolved' since then. Just
like Dracula did before it.
What has been done about 'Son of Calibre'? Is there one? Or are you just
going to milk it to its death and let someone else do the next generation
thinking this time? Cadence (just) got away with it but I seriously doubt
Mentor could.
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Joe Sawicki - GM of Design-to-Silicon, Mentor Graphics
Does Mentor still want to be a competitor to Cadence for IC design?
If yes, what are they doing to penetrate the Synopsys, Cadence and Magma
flows? Calibre is running out of steam compare to PVS from Cadence and
Mojave from Magma. Any news there?
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Question for Joe Sawicki:
Given the complexity of 65 nm and below, how do you plan to maintain the
effectiveness of our Calibre franchise without the necessary links to design
implementation tools? Calibre is losing market share. Rumor has that
customers are upset with their roadmap.
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Joe Sawicki: After the market close today, KLA-Tencor announces it is
acquiring 100% of Mentor Graphics. In your quote to the press as to why
the combination makes tremendous sense strategically, what do you say?
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Sawicki:
Give me 3 examples where a lack of inductance modeling has produced a
catastrophic failure. This 'want' has been talked about for years, which
is great for marketing. I am yet to see a 'need'.
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For Joe Sawicki (Mentor):
If the Calibre DRC and Calibre LFD are not consistent in terms of the errors
they are flagging, how can we decide which errors are real errors and must
be fixed and which errors should be waived (ignored)?
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Joe - Mentor - the future holds a lot of competition for Calibre - the
current release of Hercules is doing very well, one of their better
releases. Magma just released DRC/LVS and rumor is that Cadence will be
releasing their new killer DRC/LVS very soon; so this has to impact
Calibre, which is the single pontoon that keeps Mentor (a break even
company with no assets to sustain a downturn) floating. What will Joe
do to keep Calibre out front ? How will Calibre hold its market share
and selling prices ?
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Question for Joe Sawicki - GM of Design-to-Silicon, Mentor Graphics
If the Cadence anouncement regarding a new tool to fight Calibre is true,
what are the Mentor plans?
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We have two questions, both for Mentor Graphics.
1. You are currently supporting two different design capture packages, first
your own Mentor package and second the tools from the former Viewlogic.
Will these two tool suites stay isolated and directed at different market
segments or is the plan to merge these into a single tool suite, and if
so what is the schedule for that change and what will be the impact of
change on customers using each of the two suites?
2. What is the future plans for the old Viewlogic to Agile interface? All
requests to get it brought up to current have fallen on deaf ears and are
told that a new and better interface exists for a mere $100,000 and that
will not include our internal project integration and testing costs.
Surely you can do something better than that.
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Joe -
Why is Mentor End-of-Lifeing FormalPro? It's the only true independent
EC tool. You can't trust Verplex with a Cadence flow. You can't trust
Formaility with a Synopsys flow.
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Joe Sawicki - GM of Design-to-Silicon, Mentor Graphics
Looks like you guys are not a front-to-back tool source. What do you
think you are?
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Mentor: "When will we see the first processor-based ASIC emulation System
from Mentor?"
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