EDA News Monday June 30, 2003 From: EDAToolsCafe _____ Cadence _____ About This Issue Bookends at DAC - Part II The best kept secret in Anaheim _____ June 23-27, 2003 By Peggy Aycinena Read business product alliance news and analysis of weekly happenings _____ Dateline - June 6, 2003 - Still stuck in traffic on "the 5" in the L.A. Basin, but starting to make progress out of Los Angeles at last. Emerging through the smog, one can begin to see the contours of the hills that will resolve into the mountains that one has to get over in order to reach the endless highway that stretches north for several hundred miles through the dry, summertime San Joaquin Valley. Stuck in traffic and still thinking about DAC, about the bookends, about the ideas that encased the conference from beginning to end, from end to beginning ... If you think about it in a non-causal sort of way, Thursday afternoon's closing keynote address from Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli was a great lead-in to Monday afternoon's event, three days earlier. That's because everything that Alberto recounted on Thursday in reviewing 40 years of history in EDA - all of those landmark breakthroughs in technology, all of those papers and conferences, all of those newly founded companies, etc. - were made possible by Real People. People who didn't live in a vacuum. People who had to have interwoven their technical work with their private lives and managed to do so with lots/some/no balance between their personal and professional selves. How did they do it? How did they create or contribute to successful companies and/or technologies and maintain a personal life as well? It wasn't easy then and it isn't easy today. And that's where the Workshop for Women in EDA comes in. This 3-hour confab at the outset of DAC each year allows Real People to address the Real Issues that surround the dual paradigm of engineer/complex adult, manager/parent, technologist/human being. This year, the workshop was attended by 80+ people over the course of Monday afternoon, and lest you tune out now because you presume the content of such a workshop is irrelevant to your life or simply "A Chick Event," perhaps it would interest you to know that Dataquest's Gary Smith and Synopsys' Aart de Geus were there, as well as the Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Cadence, Penny Herscher, who gave the keynote address. Among the many themes that Penny touched on - how people can balance career and family (they can't), how people push back when the boss asks them to do things that aren't personally useful (with honesty and a sense of self-worth), how people self-motivate when they're not getting a lot of positive reinforcement in the workplace (by being your own best friend), how people realize that the problems they have at work are shared by many others (by keeping channels of communication open at all times). Now, perhaps these issues aren't important to you. Perhaps you believe they're only important to women and the weaker members of the stronger sex. Perhaps you feel that Real Men never feel under-appreciated at work. Real Men are never asked to choose what's best for the company over what's best for them as an individual. Real Men don't have any problems trying to carve enough time out of a 24-hour day to ... 1 - Do a ferociously excellent job at the office - say and do all the right things for their senior management and say and do all of the right things for their direct reports, work 16 hours straight each day and every day, and be perfect at all times. 2 - Spend quality time with the children after a long, long day at the office - motivating them to be spiritual, obedient, creative, polite, innovative, well-read, highly skilled in math and science, excellent musicians, athletes, scholars so that they, too, can attend top-notch universities and pursue highly satisfying careers characterized by nothing but upward trajectories. 3 - Maintain an enriching and growth-filled relationship with a spouse or significant other by giving extra special attention to all of the spouse or SO's interests, concerns, daily needs, weekly needs, monthly needs, annual needs. 4 - Work out for an hour at the gym each day - running, lifting weights, stretching, perhaps swimming a few laps, cooling down. 5 - Pay the bills, take out the garbage, do the laundry, fold the laundry, feed the dog, pay the bills, call the aging parent(s), write the thank you notes for last year's birthday gifts, read report cards, sign permission slips, read the newspaper, read 2 technical journals and this week's issue of Time, Fortune, the Economist, and EDA Weekly - and, did I say pay the bills? 6 - Find 30 minutes for contemplative self-evaluation so that the inner soul is nurtured at all times. 7 - Fight traffic, airports, taxis, rental car shuttles. 8 - Sleep. Perhaps you believe that Real Men do all of this with ease and nary break a sweat trying to be all things to all people. But let's say - just for the sake of discussion - that you don't believe it. Let's say you don't believe that, male or female, anyone can accomplish Numbers 1 through 8, have it all, make it all look easy, and earn 6 figures in the process. Then you, too, might learn something if you dipped into an hour or more of the Workshop for Women in EDA. Because it's there, and only there, that these Real Life issues are being discussed at DAC. Go ahead - read Numbers 1 through 8, once again. Remind me exactly which one of these items is a Woman's Issue, which one of those items is unique to Women, is specific to the Weaker Sex, is easier for Men than Women. I'll let you answer that query and, at the same time, I'll invite you to attend next year's Workshop for Women in EDA. This year's meeting included Herscher's keynote address, a moving set of comments from Workshop Chair, Sonja Wilkerson, Vice President of Human Resources, Vitria Technology, Inc., and an extremely interesting and informative panel discussion - moderated by Denise Brouillette, President of The Innovative Edge - between Vicki Andrews, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Synopsys, Tsugumi Fujitani, General Manager at Nihon Tera Systems, Pat McCarty, Vice President of Worldwide Customer Care at Cadence, Ann Marie Rincon, Engineering Fellow at AMI Semiconductor, and Telle Whitney, President and CEO at the Institute for Women and Technology. The afternoon also included the awarding of the Marie Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award to Synopsys' Director of Quality and Interoperability, Karen Bartleson. All told, I felt lucky to be in attendance and to learn from what all of these intelligent, gifted, and articulate people had to say. Meanwhile, you really should be planning to attend next year and discover why the Workshop for Women in EDA is, indeed, the best kept secret at DAC. Industry news - Tools and IP Altera Corp. announced that Cadence Design Systems, Mentor Graphics Corp., Synopsys, Inc., and Synplicity, Inc. "fully support" Altera's new HardCopy Stratix device family. Altera's Quartus II version 3.0 design software includes dual design paths, one for Altera's FPGAs and the other for HardCopy Stratix designs. The company says the HardCopy Stratix device family is supported by Mentor Graphics' LeonardoSpectrum version 2003b, Precision RTL version 2003b, and ModelSim version 5.7c, and Synplicity Synplify version 7.3. Ansoft Corp. has joined the Synopsys in-Sync program to "improve the interoperability between Synopsys' Encore chip packaging software, HSPICE and Ansoft's HFSS, SIwave, Spicelink, and Turbo Package Analyzer." DFM, a third-party supplier of electronic design products and services for the Cadence SPECCTRA autorouter, introduced two new products: MakeDO E and MakeDO E+. MakeDO E performs offline batch syntax checking of DO Files for use in managing the SPECCTRA autorouter. MakeDO E+ reads SPECCTRA DSN files and extracts complete netlist, pinlist, and component data. According to the Press Release, Bob LaVeque, Lead Senior PCB Designer at CIENA Corp., said, "I use the Cadence SPECCTRA Autorouter to route complex, highly-constrained, high-speed designs with confidence. MakeDO E significantly enhances preparing DO Files that successfully manage SPECCTRA." IBM announced a new service for chip designers and verification engineers by way of a web portal that will provide access to select IBM tools on an "as-need basis." The company says that by increasing the availability of a number of IBM design tools via the web, "engineers no longer need to purchase, house or maintain the latest computer systems and software for chip design and formal verification. Instead they can access these capabilities from IBM as a service, which shifts focus away from IT infrastructure complexity and cost recovery." The service includes a pay-as-you-go model, a secure web portal, access to design experts at the lab creating the tools in Haifa, Israel, and select IBM verification tools. The Press Release says, "For the first time, this new portal combines immediate access to some of the world's foremost verification expertise, a secure collaborative infrastructure, and affordable licenses that can be added on demand to accommodate fluctuating hardware and software needs. IBM's formal verification tools have long been recognized as leading edge, but they have not been accessible as a service to other companies in this way, on demand, via a Web portal, until now. Also, the availability of IBM's tools to engineers at large is now significantly eased by virtue of the fact that these tools support the industry-standard language PSL for requirements specification, which is based on IBM's Sugar 2.0 language." Mentor Graphics Corp. announced the SupportNet KnowledgeBase, a support database that gives customers instant online access to "up-to-date" information on Mentor's offerings. The company says the SupportNet KnowledgeBase system provides a list of responses to a customer's question within an average response time of 15 seconds - "less time than it takes to dial the telephone." The system includes advanced searching capabilities, such as natural language search and refine search functions. The SupportNet KnowledgeBase system expands the capabilities of the company's SupportNet Web site. In related news - Primus Knowledge Solutions announced that Mentor Graphics has implemented Primus' knowledge management software to "reinforce its customer support initiatives and to power the Mentor Graphics SupportNet KnowledgeBase," including the Primus eServer knowledgebase, Primus eSupport for web self-service, and Primus eServer iView, which allows expert agents to view solutions and contribute to the knowledgebase. Novell announced an agreement with HP whereby Novell's line of Linux offerings, including Novell Nterprise Linux Services, will be offered by HP to its enterprise customers. Beta versions of Novell Nterprise Linux Services are expected to be available on select industry-standard HP ProLiant* servers in July 2003. Novell recently announced its plan to provide customers the choice of running all of Novell's advanced network services for business on the Linux server OS. The company says its Nterprise Linux Services are an early delivery in that plan. Novell first had to introduce Novell Nterprise Linux Services, however, which it did. The company says the services give customers "file, print, messaging, directory and management services in an integrated package that runs and will be supported on Red Hat Linux and SuSE Linux distributions. Available later this year, Nterprise Linux Services combines the benefits of Linux with proven, rock-solid support and network services from Novell." Synopsys, Inc. announced that the company is collaborating with STMicroelectronics on an embedded Bluetooth "solution." The companies say that the collaboration will extend Synopsys' DesignWare BlueIQ Bluetooth core to support STMicroelectronics' STLC2150 radio IC. Designers will be able to integrate the DesignWare BlueIQ core into their SoC designs and connect it directly to the STMicroelectronics radio to create low-power Bluetooth wireless systems. Also from Synopsys - The company announced that Motorola's Global Telecom Solutions Sector has chosen Synopsys' System Studio and the Synopsys' CDMA2000 Design Conformance Lab for performance analysis of Motorola's CDMA2000 system. Motorola used the Synopsys system-level solution to simulate the CDMA2000 wireless system operation, assessing product performance. CDMA2000 is a third-generation wireless technology that is backward compatible with the IS-95 wireless standard. Synplicity Inc. announced it has enhanced its Identify RTL debugging software, a tool that allows FPGA prototyping designers to functionally debug their hardware directly in their RTL source code. The company says this provides the benefits of full-speed in-circuit verification, which is several orders of magnitude faster than an RTL simulator. The Identify software also enables designers to directly select signals and conditions in their RTL source code for debugging and view the results from the FPGA directly in the RTL source code, or save the results in a standard VCD format. Identify version 1.2 adds support for Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGAs, Actel ProASIC and ProASIC Plus FPGAs, and Agilent Technologies' traceport cable, as well as existing support for Altera Apex, Apex-II, and Stratix FPGAs, and Xilinx Spartan II, Spartan II-E, Virtex, Virtex-E, and Virtex-II FPGAs. Tensilica announced it has chosen Sequence Design's PowerTheater for power analysis at the RTL stage. Himanshu Sanghavi, Hardware Engineering Manager at Tensilca said, "Given that many of our customers are building portable devices, low power dissipation is an important design goal. We began using PowerTheater to estimate power dissipation at the register transfer level. This proved to be extremely useful as we could do power analysis as soon as the RTL testbench was up and running, and well before gate-level simulations could be run. Further, since the run times are short, we can perform this analysis on a much larger set of configurations than before." The Press Release added: "To acknowledge the contributions Tensilica has made to power-aware design, Sequence presented the company with its first annual 'Powerhouse Design Award' at DAC." TriCN announced the immediate availability of its GDDR-II (Graphics Double Data Rate) interface, an addition to the company's Interface-Specific I/O (ISI/O) product family. The GDDR-II is based on the Stub Series Terminated Logic (SSTL)-18 interface spec, and provides 1 Gbps operation, supports selectable On Die Termination (ODT) schemes, allowing for backward compatibility with DDR-SDRAM, and is fully compatible with the JEDEC GDDR-II spec and the DDRII-SDRAM spec. Tower Semiconductor Ltd. and Cadence Design Systems Inc. announced the immediate availability of the new Tower TSL018 and TSL035 foundry-level Process Design Kits (PDKs) developed by Cadence. The new PDKs eliminate the need for Tower customers to create their own "views" of the Tower technologies in their design environments. The companies say that through this development, "Tower and Cadence are enabling a key component of the silicon design chain for their mutual customers." The PDKs include a device and symbol library, technology file, physical verification decks, and design-rule-correct parameterized cells (P-cells) to automate device layout. The PDKs are compatible with the Cadence Spectre models provided by Tower Semiconductor and are "tailored for use in the Cadence RF/analog mixed-signal design solution." Virage Logic Corp. announced it will make available its Technology-Optimized Platform on Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing's 0.13-micron baseline logic process. The companies say this latest development furthers a successful alliance between the two companies, which to date has featured the availability of embedded memories on multiple technology nodes from 0.35 micron down to 0.13 micron. The new Technology-Optimized Platform will be available in September 2003. Virage also announced "the availability of embedded memories for Chartered's 0.13-micron low-leakage offerings, and that additional components for Chartered's derivative processes will be made available to allow customers to mix and match solutions to better address their specific performance and power requirements." Newsmakers Barcelona Design Inc. announced the appointment of Ariel Sella as Executive Vice President of Marketing. Reporting to Thomas Heydler, President and CEO of Barcelona, Mr. Sella is responsible for worldwide marketing and business development for the company's entire line of products. Mr. Sella has 25 years' experience in marketing, business development and investment in the EDA, semiconductor, and communications industries. He served most recently as one of the founding partners of Formula Ventures and previously served in a variety of management positions for EDA and CAD companies including Cadence Design Systems, Clarity Systems and Applicon. He was co-founder of Ubique, acquired by America Online and MyWay Online. Mr. Sella has a B.A. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley. Emulation and Verification Engineering (EVE) has relocated its U.S. headquarters to new office space in downtown San Jose, CA. Silicon Design Systems, Inc. (SDS) announced the appointment of Naeem Zafar as its President and CEO, replacing interim CEO Davidi Gilo who will remain Chairman of the Board. Zafar has 22+ years' experience in high tech and is quoted in the Press Release as saying, "The EDA industry is unique as it touches the most complex and advanced electronic designs that impact everyone's life in some way. The problem that EDA solves will never disappear and that makes it a fascinating and challenging industry to be in. With over 30 successful tape-outs of complex chips for companies like Microsoft and Cisco, I look forward to transitioning SDS to not only provide design services, but to commercialize the proprietary technology developed by our talented engineering team." Prior to Silicon Design Systems, Zafar was the President and CEO of Veridicom, Inc., and spent 11 years with Quickturn Design Systems where he last served as the Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. He was with Quickturn until it was sold to Cadence Design Systems in 1999. Prior to Quickturn, Zafar was a Co-founder and Vice President of Engineering with XCAT, Inc., which was eventually sold to Gateway Design Automation (subsequently Cadence Design Systems). Zafar also held the position of Principal Research Scientist & Technical Program Director with Honeywell Systems & Research Center. Synopsys Inc. has acquired InnoLogic Systems, Inc. The Press Release said, "With this acquisition, Synopsys now offers a faster, more comprehensive formal verification solution for today's complex SoC designs containing large instances of embedded memories, complex high-speed I/Os, and other full custom circuits. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. SoC designs contain multiple full custom elements such as embedded memories and complex high-speed I/O's, which are typically difficult to verify with traditional equivalency checking tools. InnoLogic's solution is able to verify the functionality of these custom designs through an approach called 'sequential equivalency checking,' based on patented symbolic simulation technology. In addition, InnoLogic's transistor-level formal analysis capabilities consider the dynamic effects of transistor size and process technology, which is critical for accurately modeling the timing-dependent functionality found in these type of components. These capabilities enable the custom circuit designer to fully verify the functional equivalence of their behavioral level simulation models against their transistor-level implementation netlist - something not offered in other equivalency checking tools." In a quick phone call on the day the acquisition was finalized, Dr. Dian Yang, Co-founder, President and CEO of InnoLogic, said, "I've been with the company since 1998, and I'm quite excited about this acquisition because it will give us a chance to expand the technology to more customers. I'm [also] very optimistic that our technology will be maintained and enhanced, because Synopsys has always had a good reputation for promoting innovation. As we have talked to Synopsys about the acquisition, I have felt that nothing would change for us [at InnoLogic], it would only be better. All of our customers can be assured that our products and our technology development will continue to be supported, and that there will be even more [products] down the road. I think the acquisition is a win-win situation, otherwise we wouldn't have done it." In the category of ... A Baker's Dozen plus One There's a list hanging on the refrigerator in our house of movies that one or another of us has never seen, but someone has suggested to us. The list is added to regularly and has 14 titles so far. Covering the gamut from thrillers to tragedies and comedies, it reflects the range of ages and tastes among our friends. Here's the list so far, in alphabetical order: Bread and Tulips (2000, "Pane e tulipani" in Italian, with sub-titles) Cool Hand Luke (1967) Happy Gilmore (1996) High Fidelity (2000) The Matrix (1999) Memento (2000) Lagaan (2001, in Hindi, English, and Bhojpuri, with sub-titles) Lock, Stock and Smoking Barrel (1998) Roman Holiday (1953) Run, Lola, Run (1998, "Lola rennt" in German, with sub-titles) The Shawshank Redemption (1994) This is Spinal Tap (1984) To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) Toy Story (1995) --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. If you would prefer not to receive this type of email or if you consider this message as unsolicited commercial e-mail, please click here . PLEASE NOTE: You can change the frequency of this newsletter by clicking here . 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