EDA News ¨[ Monday June 23, 2003 From: EDAToolsCafe _____ Cadence _____ About This Issue ¨[ Bookends at DAC - Part I Back to the Future via Keynotes in Anaheim _____ June 16-20, 2003 By Peggy Aycinena Read business product alliance news and analysis of weekly happenings _____ Dateline - June 6, 2003 - When you're stuck in traffic trying to escape the L.A. Basin, it's important to let your mind roam free, no matter how caged your automobile may be. If it's Friday afternoon and you've just filed your copy for the week at DAC, it's even more important to let the mind wander and think about the impressions from the week in a more "impressionistic" sort of way. What do you come up with? Bookends at DAC. There were numerous speeches, presentations, and keynotes given at DAC. But sitting on "the 5" heading North out of Los Angeles and thinking creative thoughts, it's clear that two of those speeches might be seen as bellwether indicators of where we've been and where we're going as an industry, a technology, and a people (the People of EDA, that is). The day before, on Thursday afternoon, as the buzz of the week was starting to wear thin and lots of folks had already left town, there was a sudden, unmistakable injection of creative juice flowing back into the Anaheim Convention Center. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli was speaking and the appreciative crowd was caught up in his enthusiasm. Now it's probably true that this is a pretty wealthy man, so what's not for him to be enthusiastic about? He helped to found Synopsys, Cadence, and a fair chunk of the technology that drives EDA. Nobody gets away Scott free - or thread bare - under those circumstances. He's also had steady work lo these many decades as an employee of the State of California, Professor of EECS at U.C. Berkeley. So, no matter the ups or downs of his EDA-industry related stock holdings, he's always received a plucky Civil Servant's paycheck each month and, no doubt, health insurance as well. Nonetheless, at this point in his career he could be resting on his laurels and starting to look to his personal hobbies - travel, golf, whatever - rather than exerting the energy needed to come up with a clever Keynote Speech. But to his credit, and our benefit, he did expend the time and creativity to conceive and deliver a knock-'em-dead address that I think anyone lucky enough to have been in the audience will remember for a good long while - and ponder, whether stuck in traffic or not. Alberto declared the history of EDA to be cyclical, and defined those cycles thusly: The Age of Gods ... defined as the Age of the Senses The Age of Heroes ... defined as the Age of the Imagination The Age of Man ... defined as the Age of Reason and Conservatism He then went epoch by epoch and defended his thesis with elaborate details and exquisitely crafted PowerPoint slides - the latter a particular joy, if you're an aficionado of the art of PowerPoint. For the Age of Gods, Alberto choose the years 1964 to 1978. In that era, he said, the first generation of electronic CAD companies emerged - none of which survived - based on technologies like circuit simulation, logic simulation, MOS timing simulation, wire routing, and PCB layout. It was difficult to stay abreast of the promise of the technology developments in the Age of Gods, because the increasing complexity in the software was outpacing the ability of the hardware to handle the tasks. The business of EDA was difficult and there was not enough sales volume to produce sufficient return on investment. There was little company loyalty and mere mortals were incapable of reading the future. Why does that define the Age of Gods? Alberto said things were loose then, and undefined, and mystical in their scale, but with few ties to reality. For the Age of Heroes, Alberto choose the years 1978 to 1992. These were obviously the good years - the great years, even - as verification, testing, layout, databases, physical verification, logic synthesis, HDLs, hardware accelerators, FPGAs, high-level synthesis and so forth all emerged and descended with a vengeance upon the world of electronic design automation. Great companies were founded, fortunes were made, people were consistently thinking grand thoughts, conceiving solutions, and working "outside the box." The second generation of EDA companies were founded in the Age of Heroes - Daisy, Mentor, Valid - and the third generation as well, including Cadence and Synopsys among many others. Happily, according to Alberto, Mentor, Cadence, and Synopsys still thrive - all children of the Age of Heroes. Alas, however, Alberto said we are now mired in the Age of Man - a less than noble epoch - that started in 1995 and continues unabated today. He said we're unwilling now in the current era to take as many risks. We're conservative and hedging our bets on existing business structures and established technologies. It's true there are new initiatives in physical verification, self test, asynchronous synthesis, hardware/software co-design, software design, and analog design synthesis - but the mind set, investment, and vigorous and aggressive energy which characterized the Age of Heroes is simply missing in the Age of Man. "EDA companies are not carrying out real innovation today." Is all hope lost or is history cyclical? Can we return to the Age of Gods and thereby reach the Age of Heroes once again? Alberto has a better idea. Let's throw out the cyclical obligations, leapfrog right over the Gods, and land squarely on two feet in the Age of Heroes with our heads and hopes held high. Let's look to the challenges that are obvious and use those to inspire innovation and renewal, investment and market share. According to Alberto, the design chain needs better integration, IP issues need lots of attention, manufacturing challenges are just beginning to be addressed, partnering across corporate entities needs to be vigorously pursued, and new business models need to be sculpted out of existing ones. He said that small start-ups can't carry this load - "small is not beautiful today!" - they can't solve technical problems that require "substantial" resources. He insisted that the major EDA players must combine the flexibility and enthusiasm of a start-up with the solidity and sales channels of big companies. Has all of this been said before? Probably. Has it ever been said better? Definitely not. Alberto's talk was wrapped around concepts from his favorite 17th century Italian philosopher Giovanni Battista Vico, who studied relationships across history and developed the Law of Cycles - divine, heroic, and human. Clearly Alberto is hoping to prove Vico wrong in the next great epoch in EDA. Hopefully, EDA history isn't destined to repeat itself, but is destined instead to learn from its mistakes. (Editor's Note: Next week, Bookends at DAC - Part II) Industry news - EDA and IP Altium Ltd. announced the release of Service Pack 1 for P-CAD 2002 users. The company says the new release provides a major upgrade to P-CAD 2002 with "new CAM and simulation bonus technologies and significant enhancements. Service Pack 1 brings DXP technology to P-CAD 2002 Suite customers by giving them access to CAMtastic DXP, the latest version of Altium's complete CAM verification and editing system, and a new DXP-based mixed-signal circuit simulator. These two new DXP technologies are fully integrated with P-CAD 2002 and provide a major upgrade to P-CAD's CAM and circuit simulation capabilities. CAMtastic DXP's new features include bi-directional ODB++ support, additional DRCs for strengthened data verification, advanced panelization, and extensive numerically controlled drill and route features. In line with Altium's non-restrictive update policy, Service Pack 1 is available free of charge to all P-CAD 2002 customers." Cadence Design Systems announced the availability of a qualified reference flow for IBM technology based on the Cadence Encounter platform. This reference flow has been validated through a 130-nanometer test design incorporating IP from IBM, Cadence and third-party IP providers. The companies say that the reference flow "optimizes the silicon design chain, to help enable a low-risk path from design to volume production for Cadence and IBM foundry customers." The flow has been qualified for the Ready for IBM Technology mark establishing it as validated and compatible with IBM Microelectronics products. Michael Concannon, Vice President of Foundry and Complimentary Products for IBM Microelectronics Division, said, "The development of this reference flow is another step in the on-going collaboration between Cadence and IBM. This reference flow will enable our customers to achieve a quicker path to production silicon, with reduced design risk, using the leading-edge IBM process technologies." Also from Cadence - The company announced that Metalink Ltd. has deployed the Cadence Encounter design platform for "nanometer technology." Metalink says its "deployment" of the Encounter platform follows its success at shipping more than 150,000 chipsets worldwide and achieving more than 40 design wins in Asia-Pacific using Cadence's Silicon Ensemble PKS RTL-to-GSDII design flow. Yuval Itkin, VLSI Director of Metalink said, "After an exhaustive evaluation of several possible tools for use in our next-generation designs, we found the Encounter platform to be the best fit for our technical needs. It provides Metalink's designers with the combination of short cycle time, as well as all of the deep-submicron special requirements, which are critical for competitive advantage in the broadband access chipset market." Denali Software, Inc. announced that it is now offering configurable IP cores for PCI Express technology. The PCI Express core was developed and verified by IBM for use in its own ASICs, Foundry, and Standard Product Designs. Denali says the company is now bringing this design to the broader market, and will directly sell and support application specific configurations of the core through its own channels along with its existing PureSpec verification IP product for PCI Express. Elixent announced it has been awarded four patents pertaining to its reconfigurable algorithm processing architecture, D-Fabrix. The company says the U.S. patents "enable the company to protect its intellectual property while developing further solutions for the reconfigurable market." Alan Marshall, CTO at Elixent, said "Now we can continue our ongoing research and development, expanding further on the ideas put forward in these patents for reconfigurability." The newly issued patents cover the integration of multipliers in programmable arrays, reconfigurable processor devices, field programmable processor arrays, and the method and apparatus for providing instruction streams to processor devices. Mentor Graphics Corp. announced that Tower Semiconductor Ltd. has selected Mentor's Calibre design-to-silicon platform as Tower's internal manufacturing standard. MIPS Technologies, Inc. has introduced a new high-performance microarchitecture that the company says will "address the changing economics of SoC design and help engineers increase profitability by extending their product's lifecycle. The MIPS32 24K microarchitecture is the foundation for MIPS Technologies' next-generation of high-performance, synthesizable cores, and extends the company's leadership as the provider of industry-standard performance technology to semiconductor and system companies." The Press Release also says, "The economics of SoC design are rapidly changing as process technologies migrate to 0.13 micron and below, causing fixed design costs, such as mask sets, to explode. As a result, system companies are under increasing pressure to maximize profitability by extending their products' time in market without new silicon spins. Using high performance, programmable technology, such as the MIPS32 24K microarchitecture, SoC designers can leverage falling transistor costs to implement hardwired functionality in software." Monterey Design Systems announced that Avnet ASIC Israel, Ltd. (AAI), a subsidiary of Avnet, Inc., has selected the company's planning, prototyping, and implementation tool suite for its latest SoC designs. Nadav Ben Ezer, Managing Director of AAI, said, "We have found Monterey planning and prototyping capabilities to be indispensable for designs that contain both hard and soft IP cores. With the Monterey Progressive Refinement approach, we are able to very quickly analyze and determine critical aspects such as which process technology to use and the chip-level design plan." National Semiconductor Corp. and Synopsys, Inc. announced they are collaborating to develop a reference design flow supporting National Semiconductor's PowerWise technology for handheld portable devices. The PowerWise reference design flow is based on Synopsys' Galaxy Design Platform. Silicon Metrics and Magma Design Automation Inc. announced that Silicon Metrics has joined the MagmaTies partnership program. Silicon Metrics' SiliconSmart characterization and modeling technology has now been validated to produce the necessary crosstalk data for Magma's comprehensive noise tool. The companies say that the integration effort required extensive collaboration between the two organizations to define the model format extensions, determine the unique measurements required and certify the models. Also from Silicon Metrics - Cadence Design Systems, Inc. and Silicon Metrics announced development of "nanometer-ready" delay models based on extensions to the Liberty model format. The effective current source models (ECSM) can be created by Silicon Metrics' SiliconSmart library characterization tool and used by Cadence's nanometer delay calculator SignalStorm, the common delay calculation engine of the Cadence Encounter platform. The companies say that this announcement is also the result of close cooperation between the two companies in establishing the characterization requirements, model format definitions, and model qualification. The Press Release says, "Until now, creating ECSM models required a separate timing characterization process and a binary format. By extending the Liberty format, Cadence and Silicon Metrics have unified timing characterization into a single step and a single format that can support both table lookup models and the advanced ECSM models. Customers can now utilize the power of ECSM models while maintaining a consistent set of timing views. Furthermore, tools that do not support ECSM models will be able to read and ignore the ECSM extensions without requiring any upgrades." Tera Systems says its TeraForm RTL Design Consultant (RDC) has been selected by Sony as the front-end for the company's SoC designs. Sony says it chose the TeraForm RTL analysis technology to "enable its RTL design hand-off methodology and to reduce expensive downstream gate-level design iterations." Newsmakers Amphion announced the closing of a US$5 million funding round. ACT Venture Capital led the round, which included investment from existing investors Apax Partners' Funds and Enterprise Equity, and new investment from Invest Northern Ireland. Amphion says the company was advised by corporate finance house Ion Equity. Applied Wave Research, Inc. (AWR) announced the appointment of James Solomon, "EDA industry visionary," to the company's board of directors. Solomon is well known for his innovative contributions to design tool technology, specifically in the area of analog and mixed-signal design, to benefit electronic systems and integrated circuit (IC) designers. AWR President and CEO James Spoto said, "I'm honored to have Jim serve on our board. His insight and vast expertise will be of great benefit as we work together again to take analog and radio frequency EDA to the next level." The AWR announcement says, "Solomon is best known as the founder of SDA, which later became Cadence Design Systems, and as the EDA Consortium's 1997 Phil Kaufman award winner. Over 12 years at Cadence, he held various positions, including President and CEO. At Cadence Jim (as general manager of the analog and mixed-signal division) joined forces with Spoto (as Vice President of Engineering) to create the leading analog and mixed-signal solution. Before Cadence, Solomon was the director of IC design at National Semiconductor and previously, he started and managed the analog IC unit at Motorola Semiconductor and was an RF/microwave designer at Motorola Systems Research Labs. Solomon's most recent endeavors include the founding of Xulu Entertainment, Inc., a provider of entertainment software, and Smart Machines, Inc, a semiconductor equipment robotics company. Solomon received BSEE degrees and MSEE degrees from U.C. Berkeley. He is an IEEE Fellow, has published more than 50 technical papers, and holds 23 patents." PDF Solutions, Inc. announced a key extension to its "yield optimization solutions technology." Pursuant to an asset purchase agreement with WaferYield, Inc., a privately held corporation, PDF has acquired the WAMA technology and associated business in an all-cash transaction. Future payments up to a pre-determined maximum, which are also in cash, are dependent upon reaching certain performance and revenue milestones related to the WAMA technology. Further terms of the agreement were not disclosed. As part of the transaction, key members of the WaferYield team have joined PDF Solutions, including WaferYield Co-Founders Ron Sigura (formerly the company's CEO) and Eitan Cadouri, (formerly the company's CTO). The WAMA product offering - derived from the words WAfer MAp - is designed to optimize semiconductor wafer shot maps to help customers achieve greater yield and net die per wafer, higher stepper throughput, and reduced probe test costs. Also from PDF Solutions - The company announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire IDS Software Systems Inc., a privately held corporation. Under terms of the agreement, PDF Solutions will acquire IDS for $20.0 million in cash and 2,500,000 shares of PDF's Common Stock, resulting in an aggregate consideration value of approximately $50.6 million, based upon the closing price of PDF's common stock on the Nasdaq on June 19, 2003 of $12.25 per share. In addition, PDF Solutions says it will assume all of IDS' stock options outstanding immediately prior to the close of the transaction. PDF currently expects the transaction to close in August, subject to customary closing conditions. Upon closing of the transaction, PDF Solutions intends to continue to sell the dataPOWER software as stand-alone products, in addition to offering the software as an option in PDF's integrated yield ramp engagements. The Press Release says, "As semiconductor companies create products in multiple fabrication and test and assembly facilities, it's crucial that they employ a common yield management system (YMS) to efficiently track progress and quickly identify areas for improvement. The IDS dataPOWER offering, with more than 1000 installed seats in over 30 of the world's semiconductor companies, is an enterprise YMS package that is widely accepted by the semiconductor industry. The dataPOWER products offer enterprise data management with comprehensive analysis and reporting capabilities, intuitive user interfaces and fast processing speeds, a combination that sets dataPOWER tools apart from other statistical analysis systems. The dataPOWER software design focus is on providing the user with integrated, multi-platform compatibility with web access, a wide scope of statistical applications, task automation, feature modularity and high quality. When fully integrated, the combination of PDF Solutions' integration ramp infrastructure and IDS' dataPOWER functionality will provide customers with greater capabilities for managing product yield improvement. With access to dataPOWER, PDF Solutions' engagement teams will work with customers to more quickly identify key yield improvement areas, implement PDF's yield ramp solutions more rapidly and improve customers' bottom line results." Tenison EDA has named HiTechEDA (Washington, D.C.) as its representative in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast U.S. HiTechEDA is an EDA manufacturer's representative firm formed in the fall of 2002. In the category of ... Summer Reading Ask ten friends to recommend a favorite book to take along on vacation and you'll come up with ten different titles. Tell them the book must be thought provoking, currently available in a book store (Libraries are off limits. You usually don't take a library book on vacation.), and most importantly, the book must be a great read. That's exactly what I did and here are the results of the poll, including quotes from the reviewers. Hopefully something on the list will inspire you to find the book and add it to your vacation packing list. 1 - One Hundred Years of Solitude - by Gabriel Garcia Marques (1967) - "A multi-generational epic of family dynamics in Latin America. It's all there - history, injustice, ideology, love, death, and surrealism." 2 - Empire Falls - by Richard Russo (2001) - "In some ways, this is an American response to One Hundred Years of Solitude, but set among the working class of a small New England town." 3 - Palace Walk - by Naguib Mahfouz (1956) - "I wish I could have read this in the original Arabic, and I wish I could have been there when Mahfouz received the Nobel Prize for the book." 4 - Captain Corelli's Mandolin - by Louis de Bernieres (1994) - "Set on a Greek Island in World War II. Vastly superior to the movie of the same name, complex and very moving." 5 - Davita's Harp - by Chiam Potok ( 1985) - "The Labor Movement, the Spanish Civil war, Gernika, New York and Communism in the 1930's, both World Wars, but most importantly a young girl trying to understand the world and its painful, seemingly arbitrary rules." 6 - Running in the Family - by Michael Ondaatje (1982) - "Ondaatje wrote this memoir after returning from his home in Canada to Sri Lanka where he was born. He's obviously famous for having written The English Patient, but this book is unforgettable." 7 - Cold Sassy Tree - by Olive Ann Burns (1984) - "A boy, his family, his widowed grandfather, and life's mysteries all wrapped up in wistful Southern humor." 8 - Under the Tuscan Sun - by Frances Mayes (1996) - "For anyone who has ever wanted to create a retreat from the world and loves lyrical prose." 9 - Regional Advantage - by Annalee Saxenian (1994) - "It remains to be seen if Silicon Valley can continue to live up to the reputation lionized in this book." 10 - A Brief History of Time - by Stephen Hawking (1988) - "Let's do this cosmology thing one last time, with feeling!" --Peggy Aycinena is a Contributing Editor and can be reached at peggy@ibsystems.com . You are subscribed as: [dolinsky@gsu.by]. EDAWeekly is a service for EDA professionals. EDAToolsCafe respects your online time and Internet privacy. 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