( ESNUG 474 Item 8 ) -------------------------------------------- [07/02/08]
Subject: EDA watchers and the university folks
THE LOW OR NO MONEY FOLKS -- These are the EDA watchers, Wall Street weenies
and university people. They're interested in (or actually use) EDA tools,
but they're not full paying customers.
BE SURE TO READ ALL 8 PARTS OF THIS REPORT OR YOU'LL BE MISLED.
1.) As an EDA USER would a Cadence controlled Mentor be a good thing
or a bad thing for you? Why?
3.) As EITHER, do you want this merger to happen? (CHOOSE YES or NO)
Bad. The money that should be going into R&D will be used to pay off
the debt. It will take 1/3 of the verification tools off of the market.
The big box emulation market WILL become a monopoly.
I'll bet there's a big party going on at Synopsys.
NO!
- Gary Smith of Gary Smith EDA
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This is a BAD THING. This is NOT an EDA company 'how do I make better
more-cost-effective EDA products for my customers'. Its instead:
"How do we, the Cadence management get more (...verrryyyy...)
short term return for ourselves (management benefits) and for
veerryyy short-term investors".
Cadence is well known for draconian layoffs (just think of all the
Ex-Cadence good people you know) but when this merger gets 6-9 months
down the road, they will have to be shucking people big time.!
NO.
- Steve Grout
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I left EDA a while ago. I do QA for a mechanical company now, one that
makes a fluid dynamics simulator. Wicked cool stuff.
This is misery. At best, they pick the 'best of both', painfully migrate
anyone effected over how many months? Years? At worst, you get two
financially challenged, debt ridden dinosaurs, operating as one. None of
the updates! Twice the Lame Excuses!
My first thought, which dates me, is "Daisy/Cadnetix". If I recall didn't
the DASIX CEO, well after the failure, explain the deal as "it would have
worked, if we'd kept revenue growth on target". Seems like back to the
future -- it can work, if only revenue remains 'so high'. Doubtful, given
the economy and debt load of the companies in question. So I'd have to
classify this as an expedient by Mike Fister.
YES! Watching the long slow death spiral this'll put Cadence into has an
appeal. Although, I feel bad it comes on the back of Mentor employees.
- Mark Garber
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Just like the Microsoft/Yahoo fiasco, it's an unnecessary distraction
for the industry: it locks up resources at multiple companies as they
decide how to reposition themselves. If this does happen, the
community will lose Mentor as an engaged partner who participates in
open fora (DAC, DATE) as they are assimilated into the Cadence
marketing sham conference (CDNLive).
Product-wise, Calibre will continue to receive regular updates and
eventually receive first-class integration into Composer and Virtuoso,
but don't expect any great new features; the technically savvy
engineers working on it will be neglected and hopefully leave to start
their own new startup. Everything else will be on rudimentary life
support (regardless of what Cadence may claim).
Fortunately, I think the likelihood of this deal happening is quite low.
NO. As interesting as it would be to watch this trainwreck, I don't
think it would help anyone in the industry, least of all Cadence.
- David Cuthbert
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If the anti-trust laws have any meaning, this merger should be blocked.
By buying Mentor, Cadence would have a near monopoly on the market for
PCB design software. Only Zuken and Altium would be left, and they have
puny shares in the US market. The FTC reamed MSC Software pretty hard for
buying up its competitors in the Nastran market. And it was the big
defense contractors (Mentor's customers) who sent the Feds after MSC.
The debacle eventually caused MSC's CEO his job. Maybe Fister will get
the boot, too.
Yes, because I own Mentor shares and haven't seen $16 in a long time.
Cadence wouldn't do a much worse job of running Mentor than Mentor has
itself.
- Steve Wolfe of CAD/CAM Publishing
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Maybe Mike just wants to go back to his places in Lake Oswego, Oregon?
Did you see the photo of Fister's two homes on the lake, courtesy of his
realtor, Gabe Moretti?
Sun too hot in California... sun too hot... EDA hard... EDA mean...
- [ An Anon EDA Watcher ]
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If Cadence takes over Mentor, then they will squash Modelsim which is the
easiest most versatile simulation tool out there. They will probably
squash PADS as well. Mentor had a synthesis tool once upon a time, which
worked far better than DC Compiler. (For one thing, it created the same
layout from the same design input unlike DC). That said, I don't think
it is a good thing for the EDA industry.
- [ An Anon EDA Watcher ]
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Bad thing. Loss of competition. Will turn into a supply-driven market.
Will reduce drive for research and new products.
NO.
- Antonio Nunez of Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
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Good thing: might stop worrying that certain Mentor tools would die off
soon. (Cadence have great big pools of money, right?)
Bad thing: might start worrying that certain Mentor tools would die off
soon. (Mike Fister is an absolute top-notch assassin when it comes to
technology. Just look at what he did to Itanium while he was at Intel.
I can see why they gave him the boot...)
Worse thing: quality of tech support will fall through the floor.
NO!!!!
- [ An Anon University Person ]
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A bad thing. A merger of the first and third player eases the competition
among the players in giving me the best products/service/prices.
Fister is smart, but not very smart. He should be looking for startups
to improve his product lineup and grow, not phagocyte a similar, if
significantly smaller peer in a hostile bid. Cadence might get a
temporary bump in the market, after cost-saving measures, and consolidate
its market share. But this move isn't going to grow the size of the pie.
If anything, this move casts doubt on whether the EDA pie has still any
room to grow.
NO.
- Imad Ferzli of University of Toronto
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Bad of course. Less competition means less innovation.
They'd dump lots of overlapping tools. Users of one set of tools may
not be willing to migrate.
NOOOOOOO
- [ An Anon University Person ]
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I'm using Cadence (and Mentor) from 1986.
I've seen from Cadence: Edge (SDA), DFI, DFII. Nothing is happening
at Cadence since the last 10 years, apart incremental developments
and OpenAccess.
At Mentor a lot of powerful tools emerged.
Mentor is leading some fields, like physical verification, electrical
simulation, DFT and ATPG tools, ...
The problem is how to make them working properly in one flow.
That's missing from Mentor, and that may come from Cadence.
Yes.
- [ An Anon University Person ]
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Great!, they could merge some of the systems from Mentor with Cadence,
offering more competitive prices and new sales format (maybe), one good
thing is they will have a great synthesizer as Leonardo and Precision,
for FPGAs customized with IC libraries from Cadence.
One thing is they could merge everything in simple but powerfull tool
like FPGA Advantage, but combining the best toolset of mentor and
cadence together offering the best software.
No, it will reduce the market to two big companies Cadence and Synopsys.
- [ An Anon University Person ]
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As a CAD/VLSI person I'm not sure. This would reduce the competition in
the marketplace and less options in tools. That is why we have both the
Mentor and Cadence tools here. Some Cadence tools are better and some
Mentor tools are better. And each has niche tools that are just theirs.
As a simple yes or no - I would say NO.
- Joanne Degroat of Ohio State University
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My experience as a user is that Mentor is a friendlier company to deal
with, but from business and technical aspects. I find Mentor invests
more in home-grown technology, rather than buying it. So a Cadence
takeover would be bad for users.
NO
- [ An Anon University Person ]
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Terrible - Cadence and Mentor have their own niche markets although they
have a fairly large range where they butt heads. At a time, when the
EDA market needs to transition rapidly to aid the semiconductor design
flow, reducing the number of EDA supppliers would be bad for the market.
The last thing EDA users would want is market dominance.
I fear that a Cadence buyout would lead to inevitable death of a large
suite of products, thus reducing market competition. I'm not sure how
many semiconductor companies can afford to create their own tools.
This is not a fight against Synopsys; it will turn into a fight against
the buyers who will be on the losers' side.
No
- [ An Anon University Person ]
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Speaking as an academic user, it depends largely on what happens with the
university program. In general, Mentor has a much more generous (in terms
of pricing) and much more active university program (in terms of building
community among users). I would also be concerned that in areas where the
product lines overlap, university users would lose access to tools we
currently use.
No.
- [ An Anon University Person ]
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As I user, I think a Cadence/Mentor company would be bad. Granted, there
isn't much overlap between Cadence technology and Mentor technology where
I work. For example, we use RTL Compiler, IC and Encounter from Cadence,
but we use Testkompress and Calibre/DRC from Mentor.
BUT the more tool sources, the better and you never know what could happen
in the future. For example, Mentor now has Olympus-SOC which I'm hoping
challenges the Cadence router for small geometries.
No.
- [ An Anon University Person ]
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