Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Wednesday, February 17th, 2016
Those who play in the world of big business are fully aware of the risks: Layoffs are part of the landscape. Yahoo is currently organizing a reduction of upwards of 1500 people as part of an attempt to put its financial house in order; the oil giant Schlumberger is letting ten thousand go, per the company’s January announcement; and Silicon Valley’s original anchor tenant, HP, is in the process of letting tens of thousands go as that organization attempts to right its own ship of state.
These pink slips notwithstanding, there is another type of layoff that is also part of the ebb and flow of big business in the modern era: The small layoff, the letting go of an individual or a small group within a larger department, not for performance issues but because the company has decided to go in a different direction. And it’s within this type of thing that folks in Marcom and PR often get caught up, yet nobody talks about it.
Why?
Because absolutely no one knows better than the folks in Marcom and PR that when they are let go, their future employment depends on their utter and complete discretion, their ability to keep a stiff upper lip and move on, their willingness to embrace the pink slip, pack up their desks, surrender their employee badges, and head for the exit with grace and style. Or, if they are employed by an external PR agency, to do the same without even the benefits of a severance package.
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Tags: Marcom, PR
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Wednesday, February 10th, 2016
Sometimes you just gotta wonder what happens behind the closed doors of the executive suite. Last June, when Synopsys acquired Atrenta, Atrenta’s founder – a distinguished technologist, alum of IIT Kanpur, UT Austin, Bell Labs, Cadence and Interra, and profoundly well-seasoned EDA leader – closed the door on his leadership role at the company he founded 14 years before.
I will admit, I do not know if Dr. Ajoy Bose actually ever reported to duty at Synopsys last summer – the received wisdom would have us believe he needed to set foot there long enough to help his team transition into the Big Purple – but in truth, it is hard to imagine him ever playing second fiddle to Dr. Aart de Geus or Dr. Chi-Foon Chan, or anyone else for that matter. He is a man of that much dignity and gravitas.
Of course, if Bose did punch a time clock at Synopsys, it was for nary a nanosecond in geologic time. It’s been 9 months since the acquisition and now Bose is clearly free to speak in public about the past, present and future of the industry he has helped to create. That surely would not be happening if Bose was just a node in the org chart that has Chan and de Geus at the top of the pyramid.
So there’s one half of the good news included herein.
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Tags: Aart de Geus, Ajoy Bose, Atrenta, Bell Labs, Cadence, Chi-Foon Chan, DVCon, EDAC, Interra, Jim Hogan, Synopsys
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Thursday, February 4th, 2016
On a phone call last week with the DVCon 2016 General Chair, Synopsys’ Yatin Trivedi, and 2016 Technical Program Chair, eInfochips’ Ambar Sarkar, I was again reminded of two unalienable truths: DVCon is a labor of love for those who have been involved for so long, and without these people the conference simply would not exist.
DVCon is the granddaddy of all design and verification conferences. It’s been housed annually in Silicon Valley since before the beginning of time, this year from February 29 to March 3 at the DoubleTree Hotel. As inevitable a part of the yearly conference cycle as DVCon may be, however, always remember that nothing is forever.
Learning and networking opportunities like DVCon only exist because a group of over-achieving volunteers continue to infuse the event with their special brand of energy and credibility. The conference goes on and on, because of the selfless dedication of the folks who carve time out of their busy professional lives to lead it — to solicit, vet and assemble the technical program, and to solicit, vet and assemble the exhibition hall (a unique ‘science fair’ sort of a deal that opens every afternoon after the technical sessions have wrapped up for the day).
But these kinds of volunteers do not always step forward and even when they do contribute at this level, their efforts often go unnoticed. Hence, when you think of DVCon, remember to be grateful to the team that brings it to you. Nothing lasts forever, even if DVCon seems likes it could. End of sermon.
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Tags: Accellera, Ambar Sarkar, Dennis Brophy, DVCon 2016, DVCon Europe, DVCon India, Lynn Bannister-Garibaldi, Shishpal Rawat, SystemC Users Group, Yatin Trivedi
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Wednesday, January 27th, 2016
Gary Smith EDA has set the gold standard for EDA analysis for longer than GSEDA has actually existed. That’s because the core of the team has been together since way back in the 1990’s when the group was internal to Gartner Dataquest and had only one charter: Track the fortunes of the companies that then constituted the EDA industry.
Profound developments have unfolded since that time: Gartner saw fit to divest itself of an internal EDA analysis team in 2006, Gary Smith EDA was founded to embrace the market opportunity left to them by the Gartner decision, and the IP industry came out of left field and became as important a part of the chip design equation as the design tools themselves.
EDAC’s membership expanded to include companies like MIPS and ARM, the abstraction levels for design moved in fits and starts up and up, and Gary Smith’s affable expertise and relentless push for an ESL state of mind became one in the same in the minds of many in the industry. Then tragically last summer, Gary Smith succumbed to illness and a singular voice intimately associated with EDA industry was silenced. However, that was not the final chapter for GSEDA.
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Tags: Daya Nadamuni, Gary Smith, Gary Smith EDA, Laurie Balch, Mary Olsson, Nancy Wu, Sharon Tan
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Wednesday, January 20th, 2016
Just short of 2 years ago, the EDA press corps sat in a room in the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara and enjoyed a face-to-face with Cadence CEO Lip-Bu Tan. A full report of that conversation is available here, but it is the closing segment of the report that informs this blog:
Finally, the Cadence PR machine closed out the hour by making sure the Press Corps was privy to the human side of CEO Tan. It would appear his wife does not make the tech-product purchasing decisions at home as much as do the two boys. Tan said that his two CMU-educated engineer sons are smart and savvy, and had advised him early on to invest in both Netflix and Tesla. Tan humbly acknowledged that he had, unfortunately, ignored those two pieces of advice and hence had lost out on the opportunity to win big in both movies and EVs.
So, here’s the hypothetical: Given Lip-Bu Tan’s involvement with a $2 billion investment group – efforts interleaved with his responsibilities as Cadence CEO – wouldn’t it have been wise to harvest stock tips from his press meeting back in March 2014 in Santa Clara?
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Tags: Ansys, ARM, Cadence, GoPro, Lip-bu Tan, Mentor Graphics, Netflix, PDF Solutions, Synopsys, Tesla
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Thursday, January 7th, 2016
If you’re interested in the past, the third quarter of 2015 is a good place to start: the EDA/IP industries did very well from July through September last year. EDAC’s Market Statistics Service numbers, released this week, offer some of the details. Here’s the link if you want to delve in.
Easier however, is this brief summary of my January 5th phone call with Mentor’s perpetually optimistic CEO Wally Rhines, last year’s EDAC/CEDA Kaufman Award winner and this year’s EDAC spokesman [technically, every year’s].
Although there was snow and ice on the roads around Wilsonville, Oregon, when we talked, nothing could put a damper on Rhines’ sunny outlook for the industry he leads: “The third quarter last year was another great quarter for the EDA and IP industries. With 7.1 percent growth, it was really good and even stronger than usual.
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Tags: Ansys, ARM, Cadence, EDAC, Market Statistics Service, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys, Wally Rhines
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Thursday, December 10th, 2015
If Wednesday night’s EDAC event at their headquarters in San Jose is any indication, things ain’t so good in the EDA ‘hood. There are no investors, no startups, no energy, no room for innovation, no luster, and ergo no young people.
Although, Jim Hogan – who shared the evening’s stage with Ansys/Apache VP & GM John Lee – said that if you think EDA’s bad, you should look at Google. According to Hogan, the luster’s gone at Google as well, buses transporting techies from Silicon Valley to their habitats elsewhere are running half empty, and nobody wants to be there anymore. The Google glam is gone, per Hogan, even though the overpaid youngsters he knows who work there are regularly pulling in salaries of $500k and holding an additional $500k in stock.
Hogan had no answer for how EDA was going to match those perks, but both he and Lee agreed that everything’s cyclical and therefore if everybody can just hold on for another 5 years, EDA will be back in fashion.
Meanwhile, it still ain’t so good in the EDA hood … or is it?
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Tags: Ansys, Apache, Avanti, Cadence, CMU, DAC, EDA, EDAC, Google, Jerry Hsu, Jim Hogan, John Lee, Mentor, Nassda, Roh Rohrer, Synopsys
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Tuesday, December 8th, 2015
Simon Davidmann and the Imperas team are based near Oxford in the UK. Nonetheless, Davidmann is a regular at Silicon Valley events throughout the year. (Wouldn’t you like to know how many frequent flyer miles that represents?)
I spoke with Davidmann during one of his recent visits to Northern California. Per usual, the conversation was unscripted and informative; I asked for an update on Imperas, and Davidmann started at 35,000 feet.
“Let’s start with a bigger picture than just the company,” he suggested. “I said a long time ago that the challenge yesterday, today and tomorrow in technology is for people to move more towards the software and away from a strictly hardware-centric point of view. And that transition, of course, comes with the requirement that there be far fewer bugs in the software. Particularly if we expect mission critical apps to be dependable.
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Tags: Imperas Software, Open Virtual Platforms, Simon Davidmann
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Thursday, November 26th, 2015
It’s Thanksgiving and time to give thanks. Yes, we’re grateful for family, friends, and another year of opportunity in this tech-driven economy, but let’s also be grateful for EDAC. The Consortium is on a tear these days, offering programs, information, and networking with seemingly limitless zeal and energy.
Following two successful events in as many months – the Patents Panel in October and the Kaufman Award Dinner in November – EDAC is now offering in December another installment of their ongoing ‘Jim Hogan Emerging Companies Series.’ And given that EDAC’s food and wine in October and November were great, it’s pretty much guaranteed that this next event will really be gourmet. [hope, hope …]
But that’s not why EDAC’s December 9th event will be compelling; it’s the indefatigable Jim Hogan that will make it worth your while. Following a string of successful on-stage conversations over the last several years with seasoned EDA veterans such as Kathryn Kranen, Ravi Subramanian, and Joe Costello, the end-of-2015 edition will showcase Jim in conversation with Ansys GM & VP John Lee.
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Tags: Ansys, Apache Business Unit, EDA Consortium, Jim Hogan, John Lee, Vista Ventures
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Thursday, November 19th, 2015
The extraordinary Marie Pistilli passed away on Saturday, November 14th, six difficult weeks after sustaining profound injuries in an auto accident in early October.
News of her death came on the morning after the terrible events in Paris, and for a time it was difficult to sort out the different threads of grief and sorrow. The loss of many strangers blended with the loss of a single individual that I have admired and known personally for many years.
Now, some days later, it is clear that the world is still turning, the sun still comes up each morning and the stars are still arrayed overhead at night. The situation in Europe continues to be troubling and complex, but it is no longer layered over the emotions surrounding the loss of Marie.
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Tags: Marie Pistilli
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