Weekly Blog Roundup: May 21
Just how great is Synopsys CEO Aart de Geus? Well, considering the recent Kaufman Award build-up, which was about an hour of deification, you had to wonder who was paying for the meal. But now comes word from Harry the ASIC guy that everything you heard about Aart is true, and some things you never heard like his vision for analog IP (and the reason behind the MIPS analog group acquisition).Â
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As a point of reference, we’ll offer our own observation. For the past seven years, the only two major CEOs we’ve seen actually walking the DAC floor and talking to companies about what’s out there are Mentor Graphics’ Wally Rhines and Aart de Geus. That may say something about why the EDA industry is in the state it’s in right now. It may also say something about the two market leaders.
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And then there’s that other nagging thought on the MIPS deal. The math looks good for Synopsys, but it’s not so good for MIPS. Check out Gabe Moretti’s blog on the subject, which cuts right to the heart of this investment. Incidentally, Portugal isn’t exactly know for its analog gurus, which is what made this acquisition so unusual in the first place. Gabe has a few other postings in the past week, as well, including what’s happening at DAC.Â
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While we get slammed for mentioning anything to do with VMM vs. OVM—we must be missing the point, of course—there is no shortage of development occurring in each camp. You’d think that if everything was one and the same that the two camps would perpetually issue joint releases. Amit Sharma’s blog about multi-stream scenario generation doesn’t seem to mention anything about OVM. For that matter, neither did Janick Bergeron‘s, who set the record straight on one-to-many transaction-level interfaces in VMM.
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And speaking of religion, Synopsys’ Karen Bartleson has handed down the Sixth Commandment for effective standards, which is based upon a well-defined process. We have enough problems calling OVM vs. VMM a religious battle. Karen, you’re on your own.
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–Ed Sperling
Tags: Mentor Graphics, MIPS, OVM, Synopsys, VMM
May 21st, 2009 at 9:37 pm
I take exception to the comment about Portugal not being known for its analog gurus. I had the pleasure of teaching VLSI design at the Universidade de Aveiro in the early 1990s and some of the brightest analog guys I’ve ever met were there. Granted they were designing RF amplifiers … but with a flat bandwidth of zero to several gigahertz they were doing something right. One of my former students is in the group that was acquired.
May 25th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Ed, it would be more helpful if you were to link to the particular post that you were referencing instead of the blog home page.
May 25th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Sean,
We do try to do that whenever possible. Sometimes the blogs appear under the same heading, and sometimes they’re updated after the review. However, we will continue to try our best to match the URL as close to the blog as possible.
–Ed