What's PR got to do with it? Posts Tagged ‘Lee PR’Predictions 2012 – Ansys, Dassault in EDA?Tuesday, January 17th, 2012
In 2012, we will see a bigger presence from companies like Ansys and Dassault giving much competition to the big three. Cases in point are the Ansoft and Apache acquisitions by Ansys. We thus might see further consolidation among the top EDA companies. To handle some of the pressure, I do believe the big three will once again realize the need for new ideas and begin to look further into acquiring new and cool technology earlier.
Jens C. Andersen
Predictions 2012 – ConsolidationMonday, January 16th, 2012
I think that there will continue to be consolidation in the EDA industry. At each process node, fewer and fewer designs ship in high enough volume to recover the enormous investment in bringing them to market, which is a bad trend for EDA. Several companies in the ecosystem will go public if the market conditions remain favorable: eSilicon, Tensilica, Atrenta. Although, as with Apache, they may get acquired at the last minute (at high valuations). Mentor may get acquired, or sell off some business lines. Paul McLellan
Predictions 2012 – Standards and Social MediaThursday, January 12th, 2012
This year, we’ll see an old standards battle get resolved. Now that all the players are participating in the IEEE Standard 1801 project (IEEE Standard for Design and Verification of Low Power Integrated Circuits), we can finally put the UPF-CPF debate to rest. Let’s hope that peace will reign and the temptation to fight one more time about a single low power standard will be overcome.
Social media will become less of a curiosity or a perceived waste of time for engineers. We’ll see more EDA customers helping answer each other’s questions and sharing more information (nothing proprietary, of course). LinkedIn discussions will have more depth, not simply people posting “read my blog”.
Facebook will remain more of a social vehicle, and for many engineers of our generation, a misunderstood channel. YouTube videos that provide good content – “how-to” and learning opportunities – will become popular. Twitter will remain a mystery for most, while a minority will find it of much value (include me in the minority). Marketers who spam social media channels with marketing-speak will be shunned. And, we’ll have some great guests on Conversation Central radio.
Karen Bartleson
Predictions 2012 – Mergers and 3DWednesday, January 11th, 2012And the predictions begin……
With regard to “Events” – 2012 will be a year of further acquisition and consolidation for both the EDA and IP industries. Some new faces will join the dance, with significant resources at their disposal. It is likely the “Big 3” will have at least one new name in a year’s time. With regard to “Breakthroughs” – it’s a different story. 3D stacked-die design still won’t be mainstream in a year’s time. True hardware/software co-design will still be a developmental area and verification will still be as hard as ever. Many panels, blogs, seminars and special conference sessions will debate these topics throughout the year with great hope and excitement, however. Mike Gianfagna
Will it be the end of the world or just shrinking EDA? Mystics Muse about Money, Mergers and Multiple SoCsTuesday, January 10th, 2012
Step aside Nostradamus and Mayans. The real earth-shattering events of 2012 could take place in the EDA & IP industries. We asked industry friends, associates, clients and media folks to ponder what industry-shattering events or breakthroughs we might see in EDA & IP this coming year. So what topics came up? Consolidation of the industry; standards; various technologies, 3D being the most discussed; even one man’s blatant personal goal. 🙂 We heard the word “challenge” a lot, for the big vendors and the smaller companies. So will two foundry-led EDA mega-companies duke it out with a third mega-company, as one diviner foretold? Tough to tell how tongue-in-cheek his prophesy was. So we’ll post the visionary comments of one individual at a time, in the order they came into us. We found them enlightening and even entertaining! We hope you do too.
Liz and Ed
What hiding from the competition will get youTuesday, October 11th, 2011I’m sometimes mystified when we meet a prospect or new client. We’re supposed to handle the public introduction of the company: i.e., tell its differentiating story, nail down the supporting messages through every written or spoken effort we and the client make. That’s not the mystifying part. We can find something to tout, always. (Look! This car has FOUR, count ’em, FOUR tires AND a steering wheel!) Seriously, I’m speechless when, during the course of digging into the company’s value proposition, we hear, “but we don’t want to tip off the competition.” Um…we’d never get into the family jewels. But at the story and supporting message set level, we do need to give a level of detail that shows there’s something different, new, noteworthy, NEWSworthy to the company’s editorial, blogging, analyst customer community. It’d be like asking your lawyer to represent you in court, but not telling that lawyer everything that’s relevant to the case. So the question I’d like to ask is: do you want to launch your company into the public domain, tell potential customers why you’ve got a different approach and technology that’s worth buying (and make money doing so)? Or do you want to hide from the competition and everyone else, including potential customers?
Finding Love at DAC…..at AtrentaSunday, June 19th, 2011You saw the trailer……
Are you curious what happened next….whether this young man found love…..at DAC? In case, you missed it – here’s the rest of the story……
BTW the CTO of the SoC Realization Company expresses his views on the future of the technology and business of EDA and what’s needed in EDA tools in this video on System-Level Design…..
Full Disclosure: Lee PR works for Atrenta.
Follow us on Facebook No New Startups? WTF?Monday, April 4th, 2011Last week, I had a running e-conversation with several folks – from academia, the angel community, bloggers, reporters analysts – about what new EDA and IP startups were out there. “New” being less than a year old. One person more or less said, “aren’t you working with a new prototyping startup? That’s about the last one I’ve heard of.” Another person, the academician, said that there were none, that the startup groundswell was in cleantech and software apps. No one could think of a single “new” startup in our space. Why? Not why they can’t think of any new startups, but why none are out there or are so hidden that this group knows of none? Lots of reasons come to mind. Yeah, the big guys offer all-you-can-eat licenses and crowd out the opportunity for startup point tools; the financial community doesn’t see a decent ROI and don’t fund EDA and IP (although it looks like EDA can once again utter “IPO” without derisive eyeballs rolling); EDA is mature and there’s only incremental improvements to be made, thus no great leaps any longer. So are we wrong? Are there new startups out there? What technology areas? – end – What if….no more big three?Monday, March 28th, 2011Continuing with my conversation with Tom Kozas, president of CADmazing Solutions, I asked him about a hypothetical scenario:
Ed: So Tom, what would happen if for some reason, the big three EDA vendors all went away? So instead of Cadence, Mentor, Synopsys, the biggest three would be Magma, Apache? Atrenta? Tom: I think this raises even more questions. Ed: Hmmm…interesting. What questions? Tom: Several come to mind: Would this mean renewed growth for the industry? Would the fundamentals change that encourage investment in new startups? Would the design flows become more or less integrated, collaborative, and global? Ed: Ok, good questions to ponder. So what would be THE big issue? Tom: The “Silicon” in Silicon Valley is missing. Without investment in new semiconductor startups, growth simply won’t happen. Virtually all new design starts are happening within the big systems and semiconductor companies which means the only way to grow an EDA company, is to steal market share. But would this translate to increased value for the remaining EDA companies in the eyes of the financial community? What’s interesting about this hypothetical is, even though it would put the remaining EDA companies in a position to take advantage of this opportunity they might not be able to. Ed: Just to play devil’s advocate, why wouldn’t that next set of players, whoever they are, be able to take advantage of the sudden disappearance of the big three? And who do you consider to be that next set of players? Tom: Good questions. But let me respond by saying what they will need to provide. So, the next big three will have products that have great user interfaces, provide online collaboration, and be part of a new ecosystem that enables innovation. The industry already has advanced technology but needs graphical and command-line interfaces that exploit the online design environment. Second, designers don’t necessarily sit in the same building but often have to work on the same problem. For example, two or more designers should be able to share the timing database and bring up the same timing path without having to rerun static timing analysis and do it within minutes no matter where they are in the world. Finally, the current EDA ecosystem is in the dark ages, there needs to be a new model that facilitates new algorithm and tool development with a reward system. Ed: Tom, thanks again for your insights.
Tom Kozas on EDA in the CloudsTuesday, March 8th, 2011
Ed: So Tom, what about EDA in the clouds? Do your clients see that as desirable? Even viable? Tom: It all depends on who is realizing the value. Ed: When you say “realizing the value,” what do you mean? Tom: OK, good point. EDA vendors have a completely different reality of their product value than do their customers. The EDA vendors believe that their product provides “absolute” value while EDA customers only see incremental product value. At CADmazing we deal with this reality with every customer and vendor we engage with. Ed: Why the vast discrepancy? Tom: Well, it’s the customer that commits the extra time and effort to go from incremental to absolute value for the complete design flow. As for EDA in the cloud it won’t fix the EDA industry. Ed: No? Why is that? Tom: Large customers already have their own clouds accessed through virtual private networks. So if a customer’s design environment included tools from each of the three top vendors, would this mean they would have to log into three different clouds? Ed: Well, would the EDA customers then create their own cloud interface that all EDA tools would have to work? Or that the big three could create a standard cloud interface? Tom: I just don’t see this type of collaboration happening among the top three EDA vendors. The industry would need something like an “Open Cloud” initiative that enables customers to have access to any EDA tool they want, especially from EDA startups – once the world comes back to its senses and starts funding them again. Ed: So what’s your take on when EDA will be in the cloud? Tom: Some EDA companies are already offering their products on the cloud. EDA companies will need to be careful that they are not creating a solution looking for a problem. If EDA vendors want to successfully offer their tools and services on the cloud, they will need to provide an advantage that increases their customers’ business success. A technical and/or business advantage that goes way beyond outsourcing compute cycles. Ed: Tom, thanks for your take on the EDA cloud. Tom Kozas is President and principal consultant of Cadmazing Solutions www.cadmazing.com and has worked for years in engineering and marketing at EDA startups – such as Monterey – and established companies – such as Hughes Aircraft, Cadence, Compass. Cadmazing provides IC CAD development & implementation services for analog, digital, and mixed-signal system-on-a-chip (SoC) technology and full-custom designs. Tom’s email is: tomk@Cadmazing.com. |
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