EDA News Monday July 14, 2003 From: EDAToolsCafe _____ CareersCafe.com _____ About This Issue The Swing of Things Clearing out the In Box can be very cathartic _____ July 1-11, 2003 By Peggy Aycinena Read business product alliance news and analysis of weekly happenings _____ Everybody knows that the toughest part of vacation is that first day back as you try to figure out what the heck's been going on in your absence. There's tons of e-mail, dusty voicemail messages on the machine, and a tattered list of ToDo's lying on top of piles of papers that didn't get ToDone before you left and probably won't get done in the next day or two either, as you try to catch up and get back into the swing of things. In my case, I'm back from vacation, but already a week behind. My discussion with Jon Fields, Vice President of the Design Platform Organization at Agere Systems, was supposed to be in the newsletter this week, but for a variety of reasons won't be highlighted here until next week. Instead, here's a slew of Letters to the Editor that have arrived over the last 5 weeks. May 19th - The hard working folks in PR Andrea Zils, Edelman PR - The team at Edelman got quite a kick out of the PR job description published in last week's issue. It gave us all a much-needed pre-DAC chuckle! Your description was so spot on. We couldn't help but wonder ... were you in public relations in a former life? May 26th - Final Editor's Note regarding Woody Allen & Groucho Marx Bob Erickson, Vice President of Engineering at Synplicity, Inc. - To clear the air, Woody used the joke in the opening to "Annie Hall" but duly attributed it to Groucho. (But you probably already knew this.) June 2nd - Movers and Shakers: Rajeev Madhavan & John Cooley Nanette Collins, PR - The profile of Rajeev is terrific and the profile of John Cooley is priceless and will give all of us some insight into what he's really like. The Boston Globe used to run lengthy people profiles in the Living Section when my father worked there and that was the job I always coveted. After reading these two today, you reminded me of how sorely I miss reading these types of features in the daily paper. June 2nd - Issues at DAC Kevin Silver, Vice President of Marketing at Denali Software, Inc. - Verification IP is a huge issue for the majors right now. This follows the verification language wars between e, VERA, SystemC, etc. They all want to sell simulation seats and verification tools, but they don't have the vertical expertise to develop high-quality models and verification IP for the complex interfaces that ASIC developers are designing with (i.e. PCI Express, DDR memory, etc.) Verisity appears to be struggling the most; they recently signed a deal with some company in India to develop models in 'e' to support their platform. Synopsys has a terrible track record for delivering high-quality models for complex interfaces. They just bought inSilicon and Qualis to fill the gap and supply verification IP in the VERA language. Cadence is trying to put together partnerships with providers to develop SystemC models in support of their Incisive verification platform. I like Denali's position, we provide verification IP for PCI Express and memory interfaces, and it directly integrates to *all* of these solutions - truly platform independent. What's all the fuss about? June 9th - EDA, Inc. Circus (variation on a theme by Kim Alfaro) Exhibit hall floor with the enormous over-sized booths; Exhibitors in matching polo shirts manning their stations, Milling attendees streaming up and down the aisles, Magicians, the talent, the barkers, the toys, The nonsense and the noise, and Those ever-present and annoyingly loud neon lights, Flickering so far overhead that you can't even see them if you try. Ah DAC! Dave Reed, Vice President of Marketing at Monterey Design Systems - Great article! By the way, most of us "fronds" have also spent time as trunks, so we do remember that thrill. Marketing carries with it a whole different set of challenges that I personally find very rewarding. John E. Blyler, Senior Technology Editor at Wireless Systems Design Magazine - I agree with you that vendors need to listen more closely to the users. Ghassan Yacoub, Strategic Technology Planning Manager, Business & Technology Programs at Intel Corp. - I enjoyed your report immensely!! Thank you for it. I have one question to ask you about a paragraph you wrote in your article. It's in quotes below: "The engineers continue to support the canopy because the problems continue to fascinate them and tax their intellectual abilities. They're having a wonderful time in a way the fronds will never understand. The fronds would be nothing without them. Absolutely nothing." The question is: Do you really believe that the engineers would be anything at all without the fronds? (I am an engineer, and this is a question that I have always pondered). Barry Braunstein, BDB Associates - Thanks for a very interesting newsletter and article on this year's DAC. I wanted to offer another perspective on your observations/corollary about the palm trees, specifically: "The engineers continue to support the canopy because the problems continue to fascinate them and tax their intellectual abilities. They're having a wonderful time in a way the fronds will never understand. The fronds would be nothing without them. Absolutely nothing." Indeed, the fronds would not exist without the trunk, and in fact, the trunk needs to grow first before the fronds can begin to spawn. However, it is important to note that without the fronds providing energy via photosynthesis, the trunk would cease to live and thrive. The corollary here being that without the sales/marketing people selling products to customers, there would be no business. It is truly a symbiotic relationship - and those who have been in this business long enough (and indeed any technology business) recognizes the importance of both engineering and sales/marketing. And they both would be nothing without each other. Luke Turgeon, Turgeon Engineering Inc. - I just read your article, "The answer, my fronds, is blowing in the wind." With respect to your following question: 'So I asked about a different strategy. Why don't designers and design houses just develop their own tools as their needs develop? Wouldn't that be much more efficient, producing solutions specific to each problem?" We have done just that, we have schematic capture, spice simulation, post processing, layout, LVS and DRC capabilities. All the tools run on LINUX and we have all the source code (in 'C'). We primarily design analog and mix-signal ICs. We have designed ICs for telecommunications (DSL, cable modem, ESS5, submarine cable), radar (B2, F18), automotive, etc. Products FAB at Lucent/Agere, NorthropGrumman, TI, IBM, Elmos, AMI in bipolar, CMOS and BiCMOS. Advantages: 1) We can modify the source code to address design issues. I have had major problems, like output file being too large (> GByte), resolved in a day or two. 2) We have modeled non-standard devices, like lasers, which allowed us not only to model the IC we were designing, but the IC and all its peripheral components. 3) It also allows us to automate much more (i.e. preparing a set of tasks for the computer simulations and letting it calculate all night unattended). 4) Much better graphical and tabular outputs. 5) Very high performance. No GUI baggage or hidden data. Currently using 3GHz PC with max memory. The cost is minimal, and additional PCs can easily be added on as needed. 6) No licenses. Disadvantages: 1) Difficulty in obtaining compatible models from FABs. The FABs develop and support models for specific EDA companies, which often times have non-public domain models. 2) Interfacing with other EDA tools, such as simulating from other schematic capture tools. The netlists vary widely, but when we need to we can get it done. 3) Customers have selected EDA tools they want used. For us this is more difficult and a lot less efficient. Licenses, GUIs, etc. limit background ("batch") processing. For example, parallel processing of corner cases. 4) Time and effort to develop and support. All of our EDA tools, but one, originate from the public domain. 5) Very effective in the hands of skilled users, but difficult for others. This, of course, is by choice. 6) Licenses. I have been enjoying your articles. Keep up the good work. June 9th - Ending on an eclectic note Greg Lara, Faithful Reader - I always enjoy your weekly reviews and read your DAC review with great interest. I just had to write to tell you that the proper way to write (with Roman characters) the name of the Japanese rice wine is "sake," not "saki." Although Americans do pronounce the word as "sa-kee," the Japanese pronounce it as "sa-keh." Actually they call their rice wine "Nihon-shu" (or Japanese liquor), as "sake" is the generic word for alcoholic beverages. Week of June 23rd Rahm Shastry, President & CEO at Tharas Systems - Occasionally, I enjoy reading your editorial in EDA Weekly newsletter. However, I believe your editorial will have a greater impact if IB Systems did not subscribe to an outdated business model of not mentioning about a company, simply because the company does not "advertise" in IB Systems (It's akin to Goering refusing to write about a new product introduction from my company in EE Times, because we don't advertise in EE Times). Do you see a problem with editorial integrity here? (Editor's Note - At no time am I directed by the management of IB Systems as to what companies to cover. I do not know which companies partner with IB Systems. Although I do tend to pick up the bulk of the EDA news off of the EDAToolsCafe.com website, I also run press release sent to me directly, as well as other news that I obtain from other sources as time allows. I do not have problems with editorial independence here.) June 23rd - Bookends at DAC - Part I Rami Rachamim, Director of Marketing at Summit Design, Inc. - There is one more issue related to the Ages of EDA I think we may have lost - our identity as an industry. We have the most advanced technologies, talented engineering and marketing forces, with a name - Design Automation - and perception of a scripting industry. It is not just our mindset that needs to be refreshed, but also the way it is communicated to others. Most people know there is Intel somewhere inside, but no one knows there is EDA all over. Our entire revenue is a small fragment of the overall electronic industry. There is royalty-related value set to silicon IP, but none to the tool IP. The technology is there, the products are there, but nothing really propagates up to the consumer level. It may relate to the business, legal and licensing issues but it is also related to our ability to communicate our value and presence to a broader audience. It may be that the only way to get back to a different Age is by expanding our boundaries as an industry and build our presence and value from the outside. It is not only about revenue; it is about the vitality of our existence as an industry. June 23rd - Summer Reading Barbara Kalkis, Maestro Marketing & PR- I loved your list of 10 books for summer reading pleasure. It was an interesting mix. I would've added "Globalization and Its Discontents" by Joseph E. Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. The book is an excellent, yet disturbing, account of how the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have fomented economic collapse in countries around the world. June 30th - Bookends at DAC - Part II Scott Sandler, President & CEO at Novas Software - Another nice column this week. I really like what you had to say about Real People and balance. I prefer to call it "integration." I read something somewhere that said when you try to "balance," you always end up with the scale tipped, and it doesn't seem right, so if you think of it as "integration" then it's ok when it oscillates - sometimes more emphasis is on work, and sometimes on other parts of life. Lou Covey, Principal Director at VitalCom - I've never been able to make it to the workshop for women. (Stuff always comes up at the last minute.) I recognize the value it has to the industry. Unfortunately, what I've heard is not always encouraging. I've always hoped that the addition of women in the workplace would create a better balance in perspective for a corporation. Instead I generally see a corruption of women's values in favor of the status quo. As a new business owner I find my concern for a balanced workplace is even more intense than as a simple manager and, frankly, I truly appreciate the perspective you took in your column this week. What is expected in the status quo is a huge set-up for disappointment and disillusionment in one's career. Personally, I try to adhere to what I call the "one percent rule." I came up with this rule in golf to justify being a crummy golfer who still loves the game. Most people play golf the way I do and the only reason they don't stop is because out of every 100 strokes, there is one beautiful, perfect moment when it all comes together. You are one with the club, the ball, the fairway the green and the hole. It is such an incredible feeling that everything else that goes wrong in a game seems inconsequential. Life is like that too. Most of life is a drudgery filled with difficult people and inconsequential actions. But if one percent of the time you find a moment of clarity that brings it all together; you meet that person of incredible character and compassion and ability; you write that paragraph of elegant prose that makes someone understand truth ... that's what makes life worth living. And I'm convinced that "one percent rule" should be applied to the workplace; to seek out that moment in the day, the week, the project or whatever that makes what you do meaningful and keep that moment before you so you understand that what you do makes a difference in this world. That's the balance we need to seek. And if we can't find that in what we do, then we need to find something else to do. Life is just too short not to make a difference. June 30th - A Baker's Dozen Plus One Anon in PR - Now, you need to add "Matrix Reloaded" as well. Ashok Saraf - Thanks for really an excellent rundown on the DAC and I hope that your list of movies keeps growing. I would recommend one South Indian Movie "Shankarabharanam" which has a unique theme around professional love for music. It is set in a typical south Indian (East Coast) rural setting and you will enjoy seeing the relationship of music with life. Cedric Iwashina, Director of Marketing at Monterey Design Systems - I believe that the name of the movie on your list is "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels." It's quite good if you appreciate a clever sense of irony, but some of the British accents are very heavy so it helps to turn on the English sub-titles. Dick Selwood, PR - "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels" - over-rated and you may need subtitles or dubbing. I find it hard to understand some of the dialogue and I grew up in London. But "Spinal Tap" - now that is seriously funny, particularly if you were anywhere near the music scene of the late 60's and early 70's. Week of June 30th Colin Tattersall, Vice President of Engineering at Beach Solutions - As a founder, and now VP Engineering of a growing EDA company I never have time to read regular columns, or even read columns regularly. However, by fair means or foul your column is now a regular Monday morning read, which I always read in it's entirety. In short, congratulations on producing informative and interesting articles. Keep up the good work. Back to work now! Week of June 23rd - A Final Word about DAC Connie L. O'Dell, EDA Technical Marketing / Support Engineer - I appreciated your heartfelt story about the year that you didn't feel like attending DAC due to multiple life events all crashing down at once. I know many EDA people that had just such experiences in 2002/2003, and the reminder that "Cinderella doesn't *not* go to the ball" was what they needed to get motivated. For EDA veterans like me, DAC gives evidence that there is still life and innovation in EDA, reminds us how many people we have helped before and how many friends we have made, and provides opportunity to make new contributions to the EDA community, employed or not. Thanks! (Editor's Note - Thanks, as well, to all those who took the time to submit thoughtful and/or kind comments on a wide range of topics over this last month. It's nice to be back.) Industry news - Tools and IP ACAD Corp. announced that LG has selected ACAD's FinePower dynamic power and IR drop analysis tool, for the design and verification of a complex full-chip for an LG digital TV product. Under its license agreement, LG's designers used FinePower to perform analysis needed to assist in "first-pass silicon success." The companies report that FinePower was used in conjunction with various Synopsys tools. Ansoft Corp. announced the availability of Ansoft Designer SV, which the company describes as "a free, full-featured linear simulator for high-frequency microwave and radio frequency (RF) circuit and system design [that] provides engineering professionals and students with linear frequency-domain circuit simulation technology and a design environment that are comparable to that of the commercial version of Ansoft Designer. Design professionals can fully incorporate the linear designs they create in Ansoft Designer SV into the commercial version of Ansoft Designer and HFSS." Cadence Design Systems, Inc. announced that Artimi, which is an Ultra Wideband start-up, is "deploying a comprehensive range" of Cadence's mixed-signal. The companies say that Artimi is receiving flexible access to the Spectre, Spectre RF, BuildGates and NC VHDL tools, as well as consulting and support. Also from Cadence - The company announced, in conjunction with Nanotron, that Cadence's services played a "key role in delivering Nanotron's nanoNET TRX RF chip design." The Press Releases says that "Nanotron leveraged Cadence's Virtual Integrated CAD services to overcome new challenges in Nanotron's groundbreaking physical-layer (PHY) technology - nanoNET TRX RF chip design - which the company says is far more reliable and efficient than Bluetooth or WiFi in terms of bandwidth, transmission power, data rate and cost." From Cadence as well - Cadence and TransChip, Inc. announced that Cadence provided TransChip with ongoing support via its Virtual Computer Aided Design (VCAD) collaborative environment to develop a design flow for TransChip's TC5700 single-chip CMOS camera. Cadence supported TransChip to maintain the company's initial design environments, as well as providing layout consulting. CoCreate Software, Inc. announced a new product, OneSpace.net software, which the company says is a complete engineering collaboration tool that allows project team members to "conveniently manage projects, share ideas and communicate effectively among diverse product development teams and outsourcing partners." The new product is built on Microsoft .NET technology and is available through a hosted service or a traditional licensing structure. The company says OneSpace.net is designed for small- and medium-size businesses and workgroups where cost sensitivity has prevented them from evaluating traditional higher priced collaboration tools. OneSpace.net includes a secure project workspace, an integrated meeting center for conducting web-based meetings, an application sharing and instant messenger utility optimized for engineering data and project teams, mark-up tools, a decision and task tracker, and a 3D model explorer for evaluating product design alternatives. FMC SOTA Design Technology said it has adopted formal verification software from Verplex Systems Inc., and has used the software throughout the company's design flow on a variety of complex IC designs used in wired and wireless networking and storage device applications. The company says it chose Verplex's Conformal Logic Equivalence Checker (LEC) after evaluating various vendors' offerings. IDS Software Systems, Inc. (IDS) announced that Motorola, Inc.'s Semiconductor Products Sector is "launching" IDS' dataPOWER software across SPS' semiconductor manufacturing operation for its yield management system. IDS' dataPOWER was originally installed at Motorola's Dan Noble Center in Austin, Texas in 2001. Motorola says it plans to continue to implement the IDS software in its other manufacturing facilities worldwide in upcoming quarters. Motorola also says that it spent many months evaluating a range of commercially available yield management products before choosing IDS's products, and that the IDS products replace multiple legacy systems at the Dan Noble Center. Incentia Design Systems, Inc. announced that Toshiba Corp. has selected Incentia's TimeCraft Static Timing Analyzer (STA) for timing verification of its complex SoC designs. Toshiba and Incentia signed a multi-year agreement for widespread use of TimeCraft. Magma Design Automation Inc. announced that HCL Technologies (HCLT) has joined the MagmaTies Design Services Partnership program. HCLT has completed several integrated circuit (IC) designs using Blast Fusion APX and Magma has validated the quality of these results. The companies say this partnership will allow Magma to expand the availability of expert design services to complement its complete, integrated RTL-to-GDSII chip implementation flow. Mentor Graphics Corp. announced the immediate availability of the HyperLynx 7.0 tool, the latest version of the tool suite for pre- and post-layout signal integrity simulation and analysis. HyperLynx 7.0 is compatible with all major PCB layout environments and allows PCB hardware designers to predict and eliminate SI, crosstalk and electromagnetic compliance errors earlier in the design cycle. The company offers two versions of HyperLynx, HyperLynx EXT for mainstream designs with clock frequencies under 500 MHz, and HyperLynx GHz for multi-gigabit designs. HyperLynx EXT 7.0 includes new impedance planning technology, the addition of a spreadsheet-based stackup editor, expanded capabilities for differential signals, and IBIS enhancements. HyperLynx GHz 7.0 also includes support for multi-gigabit signals, SPICE models and eye diagrams. Also from Mentor Graphics - The company announced the availability of the HyperLynx GHz RocketIO Design Kit for the Xilinx Virtex-II Pro family of platform FPGAs. The company says the design kit allows hardware design, layout, and signal integrity engineers to simulate and implement Virtex-II Pro RocketIO multi-gigabit transceivers in their PCB designs through the HyperLynx interface. Even more from Mentor Graphics - The company announced the addition of ICassemble to Mentor's analog/mixed-signal (AMS) SoC design flow. ICassemble offers top-down floorplanning, advanced interactive and automatic routing, and chip assembly capabilities within the Mentor Graphics IC Station full-custom layout environment. ICassemble is built into the IC Station tool, with a common database and integrated user interface, which the company says allows SoC designers to plan, implement, and connect blocks within a physical layout environment and eliminate the need for data abstractions and conversions. Novas Software, Inc. announced that Sun Microsystems, Inc. has extended their existing license for Novas' Debussy debug system. The Verdi behavior-based debug system has also been included in the agreement. PDF Solutions, Inc. announced "successful achievement of the first milestone for the 90-nm Yield Learning Infrastructure project with TSMC. The joint project is targeted to be completed in Q4 of this year and is initially being deployed in TSMC's 300-mm Fab 12. John Kibarian, CEO of PDF Solutions, said, "TSMC is one of the market leaders and we are excited that it has selected our infrastructure for its 90-nm ramp. By characterizing TSMC's 90-nanometer process modules across a variety of design attributes, we are confident that products will yield higher and TSMC's customers will benefit. This will help accelerate the adoption of TSMC's 90-nanometer technology." RF Engines Ltd. announced the release of a new set of Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and Polyphase DFT bit true models for use with Matlab system design software. The company says that one of the main concerns when moving from floating point DSP processing to a fixed-point architecture in FPGAs, is making sure that the overall performance of the processing is not compromised by the fixed bit width designs available in the FPGA. Simon Underhay, RFEL's Technical Sales Manager, is quoted in the Press Release: "Many of our customers want to make use of our high performance cores for FPGAs but transforming their floating point DSP requirements into a specification for a fixed point FPGA design is not a straightforward task. The flexible models we can now provide allow the designer to easily change critical parameters in the design and model the effects on system performance. This means that a fixed point design can then be purchased that exactly matches the model performance." The Press Release goes on to say, "In the Vectis Pipelined FFT model, the designer has control over FFT size, oversampling rate, Decimation Factor, Bin Ordering, Twiddle Precision and FFT Processing Precision in addition to the input and output precisions. The Ventrix Polyphase DFT model, which provides customizable filter taps to significantly improved the filter response in each of the bins, has the additional benefit of allowing the filter length and Polyphase tap precision to be tailored. Both models are designed to accurately represent the functionality of the RFEL cores, providing the customer with confidence that the delivered core will exactly meet the system requirements." Sequence Design announced that PowerTheater has been adopted to automate the power analysis of advanced 130-nanometer ASICs by Ricoh Company, Ltd. SynaptiCAD Sales Inc. announced a product partnership with Pulse Instruments. The companies say the alliance combines SynaptiCAD's EDA tools with Pulse Instruments' PI-2005, a digital pattern generator, and that the partnership will enable the user to program a pattern generator with enough stimulus vectors to adequately exercise a hardware prototype. The product collaboration of SynaptiCAD's WaveFormer Pro and TestBencher Pro will permit the reuse of waveforms from the simulation phase to serve as stimulus vectors for Pulse Instruments' PI-2005 Pattern Generator instrument. Tharas Systems, Inc. announced availability of Hammer, which the company calls the "industry's fastest, parallel load DFT acceleration environment for complex multi-million gate designs. It offers a high-performance, high visibility platform that delivers an accelerated parallel-load, scan-based Automatic Test Pattern Generation (ATPG) environment. The solution features two orders of magnitude improvement over conventional software-based parallel load scan-based ATPG simulations." Sanjay Sawant, Director of Marketing and Business Development at Tharas Systems, is quoted in the Press Release: "Conventional software simulators and FPGA-based accelerators are impractical in handling scan-based ATPG simulations. While software simulators are very slow, the capacity requirements for FPGA-based accelerators are onerous at best. Hammer being a processor-based accelerator has none of these limitations. Hammer architecture scales the massive communication demands posed by parallel-load ATPG simulations." The Press Release says, "Tharas Systems' Hammer provides Verilog, VHDL and mixed language accelerated simulations with the fastest compile and run times, while at the same time offering ease of use and debug capabilities comparable to that of software simulators. Compile times are as fast as 50 million RTL gates per hour on a single workstation versus several hours per million RTL gate-equivalent for competing FPGA-based systems. Run times can be as fast as 10,000 times the software simulators." "Hammer's innovative hardware architecture is based on the state-of-the-art custom processor technology that outflanks Rent's rule and a proprietary backplane that delivers more than 10 Gbps bandwidth, thereby minimizing run time degradation during debug. In addition, Hammer offers 100% source-level visibility without having to reconstruct signals - a significant improvement over other hardware-assisted verification solutions." "Hammer works with existing RTL and gate-level verification environments. As a result, designers can plug-n-play their existing verification software, including the most popular Verilog HDL-based simulators from Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems, and Mentor Graphics and the Debussy debug environment from Novas Software. Hammer supports design sizes of up to 128 million gates, and 16 Gigabyte of in-system memory." Also from Tharas Systems - The company announced that Toshiba Corp. will incorporate multiple Hammer systems and the Hammer Accelerator Farm into its Design For Testability (DFT) verification flow. The companies say that they have collaborated to create a "high-performance, high-visibility verification environment that delivers a parallel-load, DFT acceleration platform. The companies have also successfully optimized the massive communication demands posed by parallel-load DFT simulations." TriQuint Semiconductor and Agilent Technologies Inc. introduced a "next-generation design kit" intended to accelerate TriQuint's advanced GaAs IC fabrication processes. The Press Release says the "new design kit helps to shorten the design cycle time for high-frequency ICs by quickly and accurately generating artwork for use with TriQuint's TQTRx MESFET foundry process. Jointly designed by TriQuint and Agilent, and distributed by TriQuint, the new kit offers added features that support the physical design capabilities available in Agilent's Advanced Design System (ADS) electronic design automation (EDA) environment." UMC and SuperH, Inc. announced that SuperH's SH4-202 32-bit CPU core has achieved "Silver IP" status at UMC for the foundry's 0.13-micron process. A Silver ranking under UMC's Gold IP program signifies that the core has been verified in silicon at UMC and is ready for production. SuperH says the SH-4 family is targeted at various multimedia applications including set top box, car information systems. Also from UMC - UMC and High Bandwidth Access, Inc. (HBA) announced the successful prototyping of HBA's high-speed IC based on UMC's 90-nanometer process. The two engineering teams reported that they achieved working silicon on their first pass, which according to the companies signifies a close collaboration successfully integrating HBA's design with UMC's most advanced process. Volume production for HBA's IC is expected later this year. Verisity Ltd. announced that Axis Systems is integrating its XoC ESL co-verification tool, Xtreme hardware emulator, and Xcite hardware accelerator with Verisity's eCelerator testbench acceleration tool. The companies say that an integrated solution between eCelerator and XoC, Xtreme, and Xcite will significantly increase verification run-time performance and the time to identify and fix bugs at the full chip and system level. Coming soon to a theater near you It's time to Get Thee to SEMICON West 2003 from July 14th to July 16th. The first half of the week's all about Wafer Processing and is happening at Moscone Center in San Francisco. The second half of the week's all about Manufacturing and takes place at the San Jose Convention Center. The organizers say, "SEMICON West is the industry's premier annual event focused on the technology and business of manufacturing in semiconductor, display, MEMS and other semiconductor-related industries. Last year, more than 63,000 people registered to attend SEMICON West." In other words, there is simply no excuse for not showing up! Newsmakers Cadence Design Systems, Inc. announced a new direct sales model that the company says is "designed to significantly strengthen ties between Cadence and Japan's cutting-edge technology companies, and appointing key leadership." It is a revamped distributor relationship between Cadence and Innotech Corp., the Cadence distributor in Japan. Under a new agreement, leading Japanese technology companies will now work directly with Cadence. Innotech is an exclusive distributor for Cadence. The company says it will focus its efforts on Japanese electronics systems companies and on developing new market opportunities. Under the revised agreement with Innotech, which took effect July 1st, Cadence Japan will work directly with approximately 11 electronics companies, global customers with operations in Japan, and government agencies and universities in Japan that have technical projects for nanometer-scale designs and production. In related news - Cadence announced that Glen Fukushima, who had been serving as president of Cadence Design Systems Japan, has been appointed Chairman, and Ryoichi Kawashima, who has been serving as President of Innotech, will succeed Fukushima as president. Kawashima, has served as president of Innotech since June 2001, and he will continue to serve on the Innotech board. Mr. Fukushima will focus on nurturing relationships with Japanese customers, industry and government. Ray Bingham, President and CEO of Cadence, said, "Kawashima-san and Fukushima-san have the skill to lead this new era for Cadence in Japan and to enhance our relationships with key customers. We are committed to providing all of our valued customers in Japan with quicker and easier access to leading-edge Cadence technology resources, and this new arrangement is designed to make them successful as they take their designs from initial concept to products shipping in volume." Mentor Graphics announced that it has acquired Alcatel's complete line of Ethernet and media access control (MAC) IP. The company says the move adds Alcatel's Ethernet IP to Mentor's portfolio of standards-certified cores. Mentor Graphics says it will honor all existing support contracts for current licensees and will integrate the newly acquired engineering and marketing resources into its own IP division. Michael Kaskowitz, General Manager of the Mentor Graphics IP Division, said, "For more than two years, Mentor Graphics has worked in tandem with Alcatel to provide customers with access to critical Ethernet MAC products for their System-on-Chip (SoC) applications. This acquisition adds some of the semiconductor industry's most popular communications IP cores to the Inventra portfolio. We are committed to serving the needs of Alcatel's current installed base and look forward to providing design teams with an extended technology roadmap for communications IP that will include embedded TCP/IP software, CPU bus wrappers, analog component and interface bridges." Obsidian Software announced the formation of a Technical Advisory Board. Eric Hennenhoefer, President and CEO of Obsidian, announced the appointment of Mark McDermott to the Board and said "Mark's experience as the leader of microprocessor design teams at Motorola and Intel make him uniquely qualified to help identify important new processor design methodologies, tools and trends." McDermott most recently served as Director of the Texas Development Center at Intel Corp. and is currently developing a graduate engineering course for U.T. at Austin. McDermott says the goal of his new efforts is to determine a way to design new chips much faster and with significantly fewer people. The Press Release adds, "Today's processor designs can take 100 people or so, and run for up to four years. McDermott's vision is to reduce the number of engineers to 15 and design time to less than a year." Sequence Design, Inc. President and CEO Vic Kilkarni, was named "Entrepreneur of the Month" for June 2003 on the siliconindia.com website. ( ) TriCN announced new sales representative agreements with three sales and service organizations focused on the semiconductor design market - The LogicWorks, O'Neill Technologies, and Premier. The company says the addition of these companies expands TriCN's territorial sales coverage to include all of North America. In the category of ... Market Statistics in lieu of Tea Leaves EDAC's Market Statistics Service (MSS) announced that EDA revenues for the first quarter of 2003 were $908 million, 6% less than $962 million in Q1 2002. However, EDAC calls these numbers "a significant sequential improvement on the recent Q4 year over year, which showed a 13% decline. Japan, continuing its usual pattern of strong first quarter results, was the top performer with 37% growth at $235 million vs. $172 million a year ago." The Press Release quotes EDAC Chair and Mentor Graphics Chairman and CEO Wally Rhines, "The sequential improvement in quarter over quarter numbers indicates the industry is moving in the right direction. Another encouraging sign is that reported Q1 2003 EDA revenue was higher than Q4 2002 - an unusual result for the first quarter, which is usually seasonally lower than the preceding Q4." Additional material included in the EDAC Press Release: MSS First-Quarter 2003 Highlights Product and Maintenance The report shows that EDA Product and Maintenance revenue (excluding consulting and other services) totaled $849 million in the first quarter of 2003, 4% less than $880 million a year ago. Product and Maintenance revenue comprised 93% of the industry's total revenue in the quarter. Revenue by Tool Category EDA's largest tool category, Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE), generated revenues totaling $443 million in Q1 2003, 6% less than $473 million in the same period in 2002. IC Physical Design & Verification revenue totaled $288 million in Q1 2003, nearly matching the $290 million in revenue from Q1 last year. Revenue for Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and Multi-Chip Module (MCM) Layout totaled $80 million in Q1 2003, down 9% from $88 million in the same period last year. The EDA industry's Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP) led in revenue growth in Q1 2003, posting positive revenue growth for the fifth consecutive quarter. Revenue increased 36% to $38 million vs. $28 million a year ago. EDA Services revenue was $58 million in Q1 2003, 29% less than $82 million in Q1 2002. Revenue by Consuming Region Revenue from Japan comprised 26% of the worldwide total in Q1 2003 - up from 16% just last quarter. Rest-of-World (ROW) continued its string of revenue growth by increasing 21% to $79 million in Q1 2003 - up from $65 million a year ago. Revenue in Western Europe was $170 million in Q1 2003, slightly more than the same period last year. The North America Region, EDA's largest customer base, purchased $425 million of EDA products and services in Q1 2003, 24% less than $556 million in Q1 2002. The Main Man in EDA Dataquest's Gary Smith is just "Gary" to most people in this industry. And, anyone who knows him (Actually, is there anyone among us who doesn't know Gary?), should be sending positive thoughts and well wishes his way as he recovers from major surgery. Gary will be out of commission for about 6 weeks, until mid-August. Please get well soon, Gary. It's just not the same around here without you! --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 . 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