I read today in Electronic News that Ivan Pesic, the notorious CEO of Silvaco,
had bought out the old, dead remnants of Simucad and has plans to put 220 of
his 250 Silvaco employees into a Simcad IPO spinoff.

  "Within the year we will enter the market with synthesis, P&R," Pesic
   said in the Enews article.  "I do R&D the old-fashioned way.  I used
   to work for HP and they trained me well.  I have short-term R&D and
   a long-term R&D strategy."

This should be fun.  For the longest time, whenever I said publically or even
privately the phrase "The Big 3", Rajeev's people would politely correct me to
use the term "The Big 4" instead -- because Magma had significant marketshare
in some key niches and it, too, was a full range vendor with RTL to GDSII;
just like Cadence, Synopsys, and (to a lessor degree) Mentor.

I wonder how long it will be until Ivan's people start in with their: "John,
you should really be saying 'The Big 5' instead of 'The Big 4'.  Simucad is
a full solution player in synthesis and P&R, too."

This assumes Magma survives the Synopsys lawsuit; otherwise I'm sure Ivan's
people will then be yarping about *their* being in "The Big 4" instead.  :)