( ESNUG 596 Item 3 ) ----------------------------------------------------- [04/12/2024]
Subject: Sassine's first real speech anywhere was his keynote at SNUG'24
I'M BAAAAACK!!!! after being away from SNUGs for close to a decade (which is a bit
ironic because I helped found the very first SNUG with 12 other verrrrrrrrrrrry early
Synopsys customers in a hotel near the 1993 DAC in Dallas, TX with SNPS employee #2,
Deidre Hanford) it was fun to finally be back again at this 31st SNUG.
The agreement that Sassine and I have is "Cooley will be Cooley" just like I always
have been. There will be no special abuse, and no special praise for SNPS. Just
keep doing what I've always done since 1991 with EDA tools. Tell it like is is.
And, yes, even though while I never banned them from DeepChip, Sassine has agreed to
actively encourage his SNPS employees come back into the DeepChip discussions, too.
Sassine gets a "win" because now the Synopsys side of an EDA story is in the dialog.
Cooley -- plus the EDA users -- "win" because now all sides are in the EDA dialog.
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AND SNUG IS BAAAACK, TOO! -- One very cool thing about coming back to SNUG is to see
that's it's fully bounced back from those two depressing COVID years.
Synopsys User Group (SNUG) attendance from 2019 to 2024
2024 : :################################################# 2438 attendees
2023 : :################################# 1624
2022 : :###################### 1097 - *
2021 : :############################################ 2188 - *
2020 : :################################################## 2501
2019 : :################################### 1730
* -- the two years with "virual" attendance due to COVID
Sassine's inherited a very healthy EDA user group here. ("You're welcome, Sassine.")
To put into context, CDNS CadenceLive ballparks around 900 attendees, and Siemens
Mentor U2U ballparks around (maybe) 400 to 600 attendees -- depending on if you count
those blue-collar-no-engineering-degree PCB designers as "EDA users" or not.
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And before Don Mills and Leah Clark put out a Mafia contract on my life, I have to
give those two SNUG Tech Committee old timers 110% of the credit of why these SNUGs
have kicked ass over the decades.
Don Mills, who works at Microchip, has been a SNUG Tech Chair for like 8 or 9 SNUGs;
in addition to being on the SNUG Tech Committees for close to 30 years now.
Leah Clark, who works at Synopsys, has a very simular background with 30 years of SNUGs.
Don and Leah (and the rest of the 40 member SNUG Tech Committee) are why Sassine has
inherited a healthy SNUG that's more SNPS user-driven instead of SNPS marketing driven.
They're the reason why this SNUG'24 had "120 technical sessions across 14 tracks, with
presentations by 40+ unique logos including Intel, Samsung, Microsoft, AMD, Google,
NVIDIA, Meta and more." I've personally known Don, Leah, Cliff Cummings, Anand Iyer,
Mark Sprague, Ron Goodstein, Brian Kane, Andy Copperhall, Chris Kiegle, Jack Dong,
John Wei, Naveen Mysore, Nitin Navale, Zafar Hasan, and even Rob Van Blommestein over
the decades and at many different jobs they've had. They're why SNUG thrives.
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WHOA! SASSINE HAS CONNECTIONS: The first day of SNUG'24 always starts with the CEO's
keynote address. I thought this would be particulary interesting because it was the
first time that I (and most other users) had seen Sassine publicly speak anywhere.
(For some unknown reason, Sassine was kept behind-the-scenes and hadn't ever even
shown up in person in any SNUG until last year at SNUG'23 he was one of many panelist
on a minor panel on the last day of last year's SNUG'23. Why? I dunno.)
So, it's no surprise that this "what's-this-new-SNPS-CEO-guy-like?" energy drew a
crowd of 1,200+ SNPS users (plus 120 SNPS investors that I'll write about later)
to see Sassine give his first real speech.
He opened with a few yawn slides about how great SNPS is, yada yada yada ...
But then it became obvious that he was stalling and buying time (which he clearly
admitted) -- then very quickly on the far right, his AI Highness, Jensen Huang,
the CEO of Nvidia... and to everyone's shock & awe, the very first thing
that Jensen said was:
"Hi, everybody... You're my people!
... in 1993 when we first started our company, Nvidia, it was Chris Curtis and I.
We were at Curtis' townhouse in Fremont. I recorded our first answering machine
message there. ... thanks for calling Nvidia's world headquarters. ...
And nobody called. Nobody heard that. I think I was the only person that heard
that recording because nobody called.
But anyways, we had no phone calls, no emails, no customers, obviously.
And yet Synopsys had a van show up one day. A van showed up. Synopsys packed
in all of your tools. Back in the old days, Synopsys tools came in these giant
boxes with manuals ... ... the first visitor Nvidia had was from Synopsys.
And I was so grateful months later when we finally got the company incorporated,
I gave Synopsys 250,000 shares. Now, I'm pretty sure that's worth a few $100
billion dollars today. But I don't know, I don't know how you guys manage it.
Aart tells me -- Aart tells me it's in his desk drawers somewhere. He said he
was looking for them a few a weeks ago."
- Jen-Hsun "Jensen" Huang, CEO of Nvidia (SNUG'24 03/20/2024)
And then I quietly asked the SNPS exec seated next to me: "You're my people!?? How
the [****!] did you get him to say that -- plus a sappy personal story to boot!??"
The SNPS exec replied: "We didn't. His personal net worth $70 billion! You can't
script guys like that! He says whatever he wants to say -- and we live with it!"
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But the spell was broken when Jensen actually did go on-script talking about how great
his Nvidia boxes are -- plus how well they worked with SNPS tools ....
(click on pic to enlarge image)
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And then exactly 12 minutes later, the Great Jensen Huang of Nvidia had exited stage
right in a busy whirlwind of swarming minions -- just exactly like how he arrived.
Then Sassine did a few new SNPS product launches.
Then everyone else left to see specific SNUG'24 presentations they wanted to see.
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