Ken McElvain
Soul of Synplicity

I always believed that I was interested in electronics as a kid. I now see that I was wrong. After chatting with Ken McElvain at this year’s DAC, I learned that I was merely a poser, dabbling in the discovery of technology. Ken McElvain was interested in electronics. While I sat in my room with my Radio Shack 100-in-1 kit hooking up the multi-colored wires to the spring-loaded terminals, carefully constructing every pre-made project in the book, Ken McElvain was in the backyard with his dad, blowtorching TTL components off discarded circuit boards to stuff into wire-wrap sockets, making his own early digital designs. While I was building primitive photo-cell circuits to alert me when my little brother wandered down the hall toward my room, Ken McElvain was in the fourth grade building his own adder out of electromagnetic relays. When I heard this story, I was puzzled. My Radio Shack kit had only one relay – not enough to build an adder. “I wound my own.” Ken said.

Almost three decades later, when Ken and his wife Alisa Yaffa founded Synplicity, he was still “winding his own.” Synplicity started from modest beginnings with Ken and Alisa working from home. Alisa developed the business as Ken worked solo writing the first version of Synplify, the most widely used commercial logic synthesis software in the world. Bucking the predominant EDA trend of acquiring venture capital based on PowerPoint slides, then trying to develop technology later, Ken and Alisa self-funded the company for the two years, and had the first customers successfully synthesizing away before they went for additional expansion funds. [more]

Low Cost Leapfrog
New FPGAs Jump Into the High Volume Arena

Imagine watching a professional sports contest (let’s say a basketball game), starting sometime in the middle. In this particular game, there is no visible scoreboard. You watch one team score, then the other. Each seems to be making progress and amassing points, but without a scorecard, you really have no way to tell who’s winning or losing.

There were two exciting announcements in the emerging low-cost, high-volume FPGA market this week. The key issue in this contest is, of course, price. Unfortunately, amidst the flurry of features, claims and specifications, price is the one thing that’s almost impossible to nail down precisely. Each company explains details of the new features, capabilities, and design elements, with strong assurances that these will all add up to more of the kind of gates you need for less money than their competitors charge.

Now, back at our basketball game, suppose you took matters into your own hands and went down to ask one of the teams how they were progressing. Then suppose they gave you an answer like “By halftime in this game, we’re pretty sure we’ll have about 50 points.” When you went to ask the other team how they were doing, they’d reply “…well, as of 10 minutes ago we had 21 points…” While both of these tidbits may be informative and accurate, they really give you no more insight as to who’s winning the game.

As long as both teams are scoring, though, you know that points are being racked up for somebody. In the case of low-cost FPGAs, that can only be good news for the customers. No matter who’s ahead, the contest is heating up and competition improves the breed. This week, the competitive spotlight is on Lattice and Altera with their new lines of low-cost programmable penny-pinchers. [more]