EDA Thoughts

A New SPICE Simulator

Daniel — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:24:59 +0000

Last month Infinisim announced it’s SPICE circuit simulator called RASER.

They don’t want to label it a Fast SPICE tool because that implies less accuracy, so I’m going to place it in the Analog Fast SPICE tool category competing with Berkeley Design Automation.

Who wants this kind of tool?

Mostly IC circuit designers doing analog and mixed-signal designs that have simulation runs measured in days or weeks. They want to go faster and yet not loose any accuracy. RASER promises to cut this simulation times by at least 10X and often much more.

Most Fast SPICE tools that I’m aware of (HSIM, NanoSim, ADiT, UltraSim, OmegaSim) have analog modes that dial in the accuracy to match SPICE. So Infinisim has plenty of perceived competition and they are the new simulator on the block, so give them a test case and see how it works for you.

Arda Technologies is the first customer success story for Infinisim, so stay tuned for bigger name customer wins if RASER can prove itself in Silicon Valley accounts.

Live Chat for EDA?

Daniel — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:36:41 +0000

I just read an article on EE Times from Dell about their new Hybrid PC, so I clicked the link and visited the Hybrid site. Within a few minutes I saw a pop-under screen from Dell asking if I wanted to chat with a real person:

I kind of like that touch from a supplier. It’s also happened to me when I visited the Adobe.com site and was trying to figure out how to upgrade to Photoshop CS3 for the least amount of money.

Has anyone seen an EDA company offer Live Chat on their web sites?

I’d love to hear about you experience.

FPGA Verification and Debug

Daniel — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:44:07 +0000

GateRocket is on a roll after raising another $3M last week in VC funding.

Dave Orecchio is the CEO and I remember working for him at Viewlogic in the hey-days of the 90’s.

This company is focused on helping FGPA designers that need to speed up their verification and debug cycles for big designs.

RocketDrive is a hardware box that speeds up your HDL simulations.

With FPGA design starts dominating our world of IC design I hope that GateRocket can grow into a strong EDA vendor.

From a post on http://eda.plaxogroups.com I read that Dave is offering a $1,000 referral bonus for a new position they have in SW develoment.

Cadence ramps up the press

Daniel — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:46:26 +0000

In May and June this year Cadence issued 9 press releases each month, which felt to me like the right amount of “newsworthy” items.

After withdrawing their hostile bid for Mentor in August it seems like Cadence has returned to press releases with a fury. Here it’s only the 10th of September and Cadence has already issued 9 press releases, that’s almost one a day. At this rate we’re going to see a record of 20+ for the month.

What do you think?

Is this too much news?

I was intrigued by the Software as a Service (SaaS) release because it appears to offer more tools for a short period of time at a lower price than leasing or time-based-licensing. Smaller companies should be attracted to that kind of deal while larger companies tend to protect the location of their IC designs.

EDA Stock Price Snapshot

Daniel — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:08:29 +0000

A picture is worth a thousand words, at least to an engineer like me so let’s see what happened in the past 3 months:

: EDA Stocks, August 23, 2008

Mentor is up about 10%, Synopsys down about 16%, Magma down about 18%, finally Cadence down some 30%. Clearly our industry is hurting with three of the top four EDA companies in a downward stock price trend.

From a higher perspective I see that the big three indexes also down from a few percent to almost 10% (S&P, Nasdaq, Dow ). That makes EDA look a little better, although EDA stocks are faring worse than the averages.

Innovation is still needed to automate the toughest emerging problems that chip and system-designers are facing. We need some more “must-have” tools from R&D and soon.

Cadence Eats Humble Pie

Daniel — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:44:33 +0000

I had to laugh out loud when I read the press release where Cadence blames Mentor for their own failed bid.

Even more laughable was Mentor’s feigned “shock” at Cadence withdrawing their hostile bid. I’m 100% certain that there is joy and partying going on at Mentor in Wilsonville as I type these words.

I blogged earlier that this deal wasn’t going to happen and the Cadence was going to blame weak finances.

I still predict that Michael Fister will be ousted or soon leave Cadence to “pursue other interests”.

IP Companies Hit Bumpy Economy

Daniel — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:45:18 +0000

Two titans in the IP industry, Rambus and MIPS both announced layoffs because of a slower economy. Not so long ago I remember these two leading IP companies growing at double-digit rates, ouch.

Let’s hope that these two companies continue to invest in R&D and create new “star IP” to bring their sales back to former levels.

Automatic Updates for EDA

Daniel — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:54:33 +0000

It just hit me today at how some of the most popular software in the world is automatically updated on a regular basis to fix bugs and add new features, software like:

Microsoft Operating Systems and Applications
Quicken for finance
Turbo Tax
Plaxo for networking
Java

So the big question for me then is, why doesn’t the EDA development community offer something similar to automatic updates?

If a bug with high severity is fixed on a Monday, then why don’t I get an auto update on Tuesday?

I did have a positive experience with the ispLEVER software from FGPA vendor Lattice where it notified me when they updated versions. That was nice.

It seems like mature EDA tools are only updated maybe once per year (i.e. schematic capture), while start-ups often release updates once per month because of the high rate of new features.

Let me know if your EDA vendor is update-friendly.

CDNS stock in free-fall, let Mentor go

Daniel — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:44:47 +0000

Cadence stock fell some 30% today after Michael Fister talked about lower sales and earnings than expected according to an article in the Oregonian . Here’s my favorite analyst quote:

Terence Whalen, a Citigroup analyst, asked Fister whether he was the right person to continue leading Cadence, given the company’s “deterioration,” its sudden switch to a new contracting system and its “risky” acquisition attempt.

Most of us EDA bloggers and old-timers have been questioning Fister’s fitness for the past five weeks so it’s refreshing to see that analysts have some big-time doubts as well.

Webinars and Webcasting

Daniel — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:39:05 +0000

I had the pleasure of attending a webinar yesterday about what’s new in HSPICE presented by Synopsys.

Previous webinars I’ve attended required that I use a separate phone line to get audio, then use my web browser to view the presentation. With this webinar I just had to use my web browser to hear the presenter plus view the presentation.

I couldn’t speak but I could type in questions and comments through the presentation time.

I think that Synopsys understands how to use modern web marketing techniques like webinars, webcasting and blogs. Let me know if you see other EDA companies that understand how to best use the web.